Category: Catholic women

ROOTS AND BRANCHES

Rev. Dr. Kate Winters, “Dwelling in Presence,” January 30, 2024

The half moon gives a gentle luminessence to the snow outside my window this morning. As it flows through the branches of the crab apple tree, it appears to etch dark roots on the ground. The tree appears whole to my eyes – roots, trunk, branches. I think moonlight is good for seeing things whole, helping me to remember that my life is grounded in so much more than I can see in the moment. My own shadow in the moonlight always takes me unawares, as do some of my most deeply buried memories. In the moonlight, they appear as roots.

Today I am grateful for these roots, my mother Ann and my father Jack, whose spirits run through me as sure as their blood. My mother’s surfaces as joy, humor, and heart; my father’s as achievement, responsibility, and soul. How I would love to have this conversation with them, but perhaps in this mystical moonlight, I am.

As I go now to make another cup of coffee, I am reminded that I share many of these root spirits with my sisters, coffee lovers all. Sue even made up a great little song she sings to us sometimes – “Oh yes, it’s coffee time! It’s really coffee time!” (Think “Ta ra ra Boom de ay!) I’m not the only song writer!

Other roots spring to mind. My earliest childhood friends: Marie, with whom I wanted to become a nun and enter the convent, Ernie, my first boyfriend who started my trend away from that idea, and Katherine, who lived two doors down, but whose home was like my own. I see Stella, her mother’s face, in my mind, and feel the love shining from it. I was a happy, if somewhat serious child. Then there was Sister Joseph from Holy Family School, who I was fortunate to have as teacher in both second and fifth grades, the First Communion and Confirmation years. I can still feel the warmth of her habit as she wrapped her cloak around me against the cold at a church festival. I felt special and blessed. 

The Catholic church was really a tale of opposite environments for me. One of exclusion and rejection as a girl/woman, one of affirmation and encouragement as a student/child of faith. It awakened in me both a passionate love and a deep despair. Kind of similar, I surmise, to an abusive marriage relationship. I understand why wounded women don’t get out sooner. Such a mix of emotions. As far as the church is concerned, it took me just over forty years.

While the institution was such a conundrum for me, a root that both fed me and withheld its nourishment, some of my most healthy connections were with people I encountered whose roots were planted within it as well. Father Richard Schoenherr who after one of the sermons I preached in Madison just looked into my eyes and said “You are priest,” and his wife, Judith, said “You are friend.” Both had a powerful healing effect on my soul.

Father Henri Nouwen, renowned spiritual teacher and writer, both helped me find my vocation when I read his Out of Solitude as a junior in college and continued to inspire me as teacher at Yale Divinity School, but also confirmed for me in subtle ways that it would not be as a Catholic yearning for approval as a spiritual woman. In hindsight, I think he was struggling with demands on his time as well as his sexual identity (which he has since written about) which I took as a discomfort with women, meaning me, and was hurt by it. However, I will always be grateful for the fire he lit inside me for ministry and solitude. One of my deepest roots for sure, he died in 1996, but I still can hear his wonderful Dutch accent when I read his work!

I am also grateful to Henri because thanks to my strugle with him, I had some wonderful encounters with my advisor at the seminiary, Sr. Dr. Margaret Farley, RSM. She helped me through some tumultuous feelings as well as giving me a vision of what women could become even in the Catholic church if they trusted their gifts. She was the most brilliant woman I had ever met as well as one of the most loving. An Ethicist by calling, Margaret was instrumental in helping me dismantle the male God in my head, the one I had projected onto certain flesh and blood men in my life. She planted in me the desire to facilitate that for other women.

Well, this is enough for today. I know I will write again soon because as of February 11th this blog will cease to be. I cannot sustain it on our retirement income. But I am going to try to find another way to connect, perhaps a Facebook page. This blog has gotten me through a pretty challenging year and I’m grateful for it. One of the branches springing from the roots! 

  

     

     

 

THE RIDE (AND LIFE) CONTINUES

Rev. Dr. Kate Winters, “Dwelling in Presence,” October 22, 2023

As I take my place in my window seat nook at 4 a.m., I hear one loud and haunting call through the open window. I don’t know if it is an owl or a coyote. I know we have both in the woods, but this one, and only one, sounded different. Perhaps it is a great horned instead of our usual barred owl. In any case, I used it instead of my usual meditation bell to start my silent practice. I began in silent wonder.

Besides the call, there is a steady sound of light rain this morning. A sweet blessing to begin the day. It brings me back to those scenes of healing that met me on the way out of anesthesia, brooks, streams, waves, flowing water on the hospital room television. The producers need not have added the music, the water sounds were more than adequate. Even now they bring me life. (Well, just heard the call again – I would guess it is a great horned owl. Great grey? It is loud and musical.)

I left off the last post recounting the trip Joel and I took to his home state of Wisconsin with the surprising realizatiton that my first home state of New York was still in my blood, wooing me as we drove. After bypassing Buffalo, we headed south through wine country, western New York, northeastern Pennsylivania, getting glimpses of Lake Erie. It was lovely, grape vines lined up for miles, but it did not have the same kind of tug on my heart. We drove through Cleveland, headquarters of our United Church of Christ national church and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. We did not stop until we reached Maumee, Ohio, south of Toledo where I taught a few years at Mercy College.

Northwest Ohio was a healing place for me. We went there after an amazing and somewhat traumatic time in Madison, Wisconsin. In the early to mid-nineties, I worked at St. Paul’s, the University Catholic Center, as the “Woman Chaplain.” This position gave me the opportunity to preach the Word and to co-preside worship servics as well as do programming for the students. As a Roman Catholic woman, I didn’ t think there was any other posititon in the country quite like it. I couldn’t believe it when I was getting calls from public media to ask what I though about the pope’s latest statement, usually on women in the church. I knew I was in a rare situation. It was a challenging job I loved, alongside a staff of priests and other lay people who I loved.

I had to leave there after six years because a new bishop was appointed to Madison who did not appreciate what St. Paul’s was doing there. I and the priest pastor were put in an untenable posititon which resulted in my beginning a panic disorder. But this is a story that needs to be told another time for it might take volumes.

In any case, Joel and I moved to Haskins, Ohio, a farm town with a population of 500, south of Toledo where I taught. I loved it. The sky was big and wide enough for me to breathe in while Madision seemed to close in on me. Although it wasn’t the best place for Joel. An ordained minister, he too was suffering a painful break with the United Methodist Church that treated him as poorly as the Madison bishop treated me, and it was hard for him to know where he belonged. My teaching religious studies and ethics to primarily nursing students at the college helped me to find new purpose.

When we drove through the Haskins area, the sky still enabled me to breathe deeply. All that was left was our drive through Chicago before we reached the state and our beloved people in Wisconsin. This is taking longer than I thought, but since I am sixty-seven, a geographical life-review might be expeced to take time. As does a drive from the coast of Maine to Wisconsin…