Category: Church Community

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! 

  

     

     

 

Sunday Morning

Rev. Dr. Kate Winters

It is Sunday morning. For years this meant that I would be sitting at my desk editing a gospel message and constructing the script that Joel and I would share for the service we did together. Not everything was scripted, but enough that the two of us would know where we were and where we were going. Usually. Once in a while, we would get lost in a prayer, or in the blessed babbling of a baby, or a thunderclap outside, and the Spirit would have her say! The best parts of a church service are always the surprises. That and the loving community of people who gather to pray together.

One of my favorite moments happened on the Sunday following the 9/11 attacks when I wanted so much to give the people a way to express both their grief and their hope. I had decided to give the children a job for their message – to go out and use the sidewalk chalk I had bought them to cover the sidewalks of the little downtown of Osseo, Wisconsin, with messages of love. When the people would walk around with their heads bowed in sorrow, they would see their messages and smile. When I opened the bag to distribute the chalk, I realized that I had purchased “Sidewalk Chalk Bubblegum!” A little boy with a big high pitched voice said at the top of his lungs “Pastor Kate, you really ought to read the labels!” The whole congregation erupted in healing laughter. It was exactly the blessing we all needed.

I never understood those who chose not to have a time for children during the service as it felt like they were only putting the children on display. Yes, they could be cute and funny, but this was also their time to minister to the whole congregation in a way only they could. Whether they were handing out palms, collecting soup for the food cupboard, sitting with their arms around their siblings, or reminding their pastor to pay attention to what she was buying, they displayed God’s spirit in a most unguarded way. The babies who escaped and crawled down the center aisle or up toward the pulpit taught the people that God’s space was meant to be explored, touched, even tasted. The little one who came up to communion with his mother only to get a blessing, and then screamed the whole way back to his seat “I WANT SOME!” converted a whole church to children’s communion. Children do ministry.

It is Sunday morning, a little more than two months into our retirement. I miss our church community. I do not miss acting as their pastor, but I miss being amazed, taught, and loved by them. Especially the children.