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LEAVING THE COCOON

Rev. Dr. Kate Winters “Dwelling in Presence”, June 12, 2023

Thank God for Dr. Marvin Ellison! Marvin was my Ethics professor in seminary as well as my friend. He and husband Frank took Joel in for the five days I was in the hospital in Portland. If that wasn’t enough, he took the time to come and visit me on one of my last days there bearing a gift, the latest book by Carter Heyward, one of my favorite feminist theologians, entitled The 7 Deadly Sins of White Christian Nationalism: A Call to Action. To be honest, just the title was enough to take my breath away in the state I was in. And the weight of the book nearly exceeded my doctor’s prescribed limit for lifting. Was this the best thing for me to be reading now? In all honesty, I could not concentrate enough to read anything at all. The hospital menu baffled me!

But this is a new day. No, my concentration has not fully returned, but something is changing. When I returned home after surgery, I remember walking into the house and plopping myself down in one corner of the sofa in the living room. After that, for six weeks I rarely left it. When the physical therapist or the visiting nurse came, I was seen in that corner. When friends would stop over, I would greet them from that corner. I did sleep in my bed, but early mornings would find me right back in that corner.

I didn’t recognize that I was hiding out there until I realized that Joel had erected my beloved screen tent on the deck weeks before and I had yet to go outside. Instead of blessed afternoons surrounded by clouds, trees, and birds, I was in the living room under an afghan made by a friend in my corner on the sofa. Yes, I had my little excursions down to the mailbox and back to fulfill my walking requrements, but I would return right to my spot to read, to write, drink my coffee, and doze. It seems it had become my “safe place.”

I wonder if this is a common occurrence – when one has had a traumtic event like open-heart surgery, does one seek safety following it? Was I making my world very small so as not to be challenged in any way by what else was out there? I had created this cocoon for myself and only felt comfortable within. I was even hesitant to sit on the other side of the sofa! How crazy is that? And yes, in case you are wondering, I am in my corner right now.

Now, there is nothing wrong with seeking comfort, but my mind is in a new place. I sit here, finally, with Marvin’s gift open on my lap. In the first chapter, in Heyward’s words, it is telling me that it is time to speak out on “behalf of a God of justice, love, and peace.” (p.4) Actually, this has long been Marvin’s gift to his students, a perspective on life in which they, we, have a purpose, one in which they, we, could do something to bring about justice for all people. We cannot afford to stay in our cocoons for too long seeking safety and comfort. There is a time for courage and stepping out when the injustice that infects our society is all too evident in our time and place. No doubt, it is all too evident now.

So, Marvin, thank you for the latest call to action in the form of Carter Heyward’s book. It is clear to me that I cannot “dwell in presence” these days by staying cocooned off from the fear that my LGBTQ friends live with day in and day out, as well as the terror that stalks our schools in this age of gun violence. If I start an injustice list here, I’ll never end, so for now, I’ll just commit myself to become more intimately acquainted with the roots of all this evil and offer my new strength (I’m counting on this new heart!) in whatever way I can to weaken them. I’d like to just pluck them all out, but that’s going to take every single one of us to leave our own comfortable corners.

STARE TRANSFORMED

Rev. Dr. Kate Winters, Dwelling in Presence, June 10, 2023

This morning finds me back in stare mode. It took me a good hour and a half to lift up this journal and begin to write as the candle burns down beside me and the coffee has turned cold. There is a thick fog rolling in from the coast, and it seems to have clouded my brain. The birds, however, sing right through – this morning I hear cardinals, the song sparrow, chickadees, the titmouse, gold finches, and catbird. At least, those are all I can distinguish right now.

Joel is up and sits by the open window reading. It is a great sadness for him, therefore for me, that he cannot hear most of the birds. He is deficient in hearing, especially at the higher decibels. But he will spot a bird, a color, a shape, a pattern of flying, long before I do. The highlight of his week is spotting a new bird, then finding it in Sibley’s or one of our Audubon books, and reading up on it. His passion has been passed on to me.

Perhaps this is a way to break through the stare – to keep one’s senses sharp and working. Notice the fog creeping in and its dissipation, distinguish the songs of the birds and the rhythmic tapping of the woodpeckers, go for a second cup of coffee when I can no longer smell its goodness or breathe in its steam, watch the wax dripping down the candle creating pleasing shapes of their own. If I must stare, I could stare with appreciation for the life changing around me. Know that I am part of this ever-changing scene. Even if I feel stagnant, the truth is I am part of this developing tableau.

Last night, I was awakened by the call of the barred owl somewhere near my bedroom window. I awakened Joel who also loves to hear this beloved bird. I then lay there as its haunting call moved further and further away. It dawned on me as I was listening that this was more than staring into the night. The call had awakened my longing to be in relationship, reaching out for this manifestation of creation that I love. Perhaps it was reaching out to me as well and both of us were changed.

The purpose of staring mode (written in a previous post as being “blank”) has changed for me. It seems to invite us to sharpen our senses, note what moves us, calls us, invites us, to a deeper consciousness of life and beauty in order to enter a more profound relationship with them. The birds, the fog, the coffee steam, the candle wax all called to me this morning. I think Martin Buber would say that these initial “I/It” relationships were moving toward “I/Thou.” All of being inhabits a spirit we can relate to. And be changed by.

UNBECOMING

Rev. Dr. Kate Winters, Dwelling in Presence, June 8, 2023

To my surprise, Joel joined me in my early rising this morning. I told him I was thinking of writing a post entitled “Back to the Drawing Board.” I seem to be asking all the same questions I used to ask every time I was in transition mode. What is my true calling? How am I meant to serve the world? Who am I now? I am clearly wrestling in this retirement with having a purpose.

He shared some wise words with me. “Kate, I think your purpose right now is unbecoming.” Now to me that meant “unattractive,” and I certainly did not want to hear that from my husband. “No,” he said, “unbecoming who you were.” He said that he has been thinking after all these years in ministry that he has a right to his retirement. He gave himself fully over to the church (and yes, he certainly did!), and now he thinks that God is good with him exploring his other loves. His art, pottery, his land, the birds. It has taken him some time to unbecome the minister, the administrator, the one with whom the buck stopped. Now he is free to become something else.

Honestly, I have loved watching the stress drop away from him as he builds his birdhouses (now sheltering swallows, chickadees, and blue birds), mows paths in his “No Mow May” lawn for me to stroll on, tends his many gardens, bakes cookies, and sings with abandon at his pottery wheel. Joel is in his element. But first he had to “unbecome” the pastor.

Retirement, he told me, must first be about unbecoming. This makes you free to become something new. Then he said something startling. “It may be that you needed your surgery to begin this process.” After being somewhat appalled, I realized that there may be some truth in this. For unlike Joel, the activities that I am most deeply drawn to are many of the very things that I occupied myself with as pastor – reading, writing, teaching, creating liturgy, gathering folks for good conversation, for prayer, and taking a stand for justice. It is a little harder to define myself as separate from my pastoral role. The last few months of preparing for surgery, having it, and beginning recuperation have stopped me in my tracks. And, as Joel said to me, “I needed to unbecome what I was to become who I am now.

So, it is time for me to unbecome the pastor, but I am sure this does not mean totally giving up the things I love. During one of my first transitions as an adult, from grad school to the working world, Sr. Margaret Farley, my beloved advisor from Yale Divinity School, told me to choose to do what I loved, for it is in that way that I would serve the world with the gifts that God had given me. This was long before I ever heard Frederick Buchner’s oft quoted saying that your true calling lies where your greatest gladness meets the world’s hunger. I have been advising others with this insight for a long time. And now, it is time to advise myself.

Currently, my deepest gladness lies in my marriage, my home with Joel, and my time in solitude. I am not sure if these can ultimately feed the world’s hunger, which is immense. But as they lower my stress and bring my heart back to life, I will allow myself to bask and heal in this place as I unbecome the pastor and become, hopefully again, fully engaged and alive.

NEW EVERY MOMENT

Rev. Dr. Kate Winters, June 1, 2023

It is 4:30 a.m. and the music is rising outside. Why do the birds sing with such abandon every morning? Is it because they are so fully alive in the present moment that every dawn is truly new to them? Not living in the memory of yesterday or in anticipation of tomorrow, this moment is what they have and it is utterly unprecedented. Imagine being born anew every morning to creatiton’s wonders!

What if we could live with that kind of presence, in which each point of time offered a fresh and new experience? It had never been before, offering the thrill of every “first time,” and it would never come again, immediately conferring upon it the sense of being precious. Watching in wonder the miracles unfolding around us, would we too be moved to sing our praise? Or would we be taken into a deep and silent hush?

Perhaps this kind of awareness is available to the saints and mystics among us (and they are among us!) who seek the presence of God in every breath they take. Breathing in the spirit of love and recreation, every moment and all things become sacred. And precious.

Although I long to live with this kind of consciousness, I am aware of the pain it can open a heart to. For as I may rise to birdsong, others are rising to bombs falling down on their city, to a stomach gnawing in hunger, to a harrowing existence of pain and fear. Every moment of this also new. Each point of time with its own unique suffering.

It is not possible to know one kind of awareness without the other. For as our love grows, the whole world comes spilling in. I don’t think it means we stop singing, but our song becomes more nuanced. No less beautiful, but touched by minor chords of sadness, longing, and understanding moving us to address the suffering we can and at the same time hold on to the healing grace of joy. I do not know if birds know suffering, but we can not be saints or mystics, or fully human, by keeping it at arms length. We cannot be fully present to the moment or to this world until we avail ourselves to it all.

LOSING THE ANESTHESIA

Rev. Dr. Kate A. Winters, May 29, 2023

Last week durng a follow-up visit to my surgeon, I asked the physician’s assistant if she knew how long it would be before my concentration would return. My richest reading and writing period, a few hours before dawn, had become no different than any other time – I would simply stare at a page, at a candle, at the light as it rose behind the trees. I could see, but could feel and comprehend nothing. She said that one thing heart patients don’t realize is how long anesthesia remains in their system. It enters every cell and it takes a while to become fully aware and operational again.

At the time, I heard her words, but did not fully digest them. But then this morning I was staring at the leaves on a birch tree shimmering with the breeze in our yard. They were dancing to some inaudible melody. I was transfixed as the movement of the birch spread to a nearby maple, and then a bird, far too away for me to surely identify, flew to the top of the cedar and sang with all her might. My heart began to sing as all this unfolded before me.

The anesthesia is wearing off. These miracle drugs that keep us from experiencing the pain of our bodies’ wounds, also keep us from being fully aware of the life dancing around us, limiting us to our stare, but not allowing us an encounter. It is encounter in life that brings us alive and fosters meaning. An encounter, a meeting with something more, something beyond ourselves, brings the colors back into life and makes us hungry for more. It restores us to the relational matrix of all being.

After the bird sang, I think it was actually a robin, I went to search my shelves for a book I remember reading a few years ago, and, miracle of miracles, I found it. It is entitled Presence and Encounter: The Sacramental Possibilities of Everyday Life by David Benner, Ph.D. On the first page of the preface, I found what I was looking for: “Without presence, nothing is meaningful. But in the luminous glow of presene, all of life becomes saturated with significance.” (p.viii) Dr. Benner defines presence a few pages later as “the awakening that calls us into an engagement with some aspect of the present moment. Presence makes us feel alive, or perhaps better, it lets us know that we are alive. It demands that we notice, and in so doing, the distance between whatever we notice and us is suddenly reduced.” (p.2)

I quote Benner at length because it was he who first gave me words to name what I think is our primary calling – to “dwell in presence,” thus the name of my blog. And now he helps me to understand what I have been going through since my heart was stopped an started again. I had literally been cut off from my sense of presence. And now, I am working, or waiting, to get it back. The bird at the top of the cedar made the happy announcement that I am ready to engage again.

As yesterday was Pentecost Sunday, I have only the Spirit who animated the birch, the maple, and the robin, to thank.

Pilgrimage

Rev. Dr. Kate Winters, May 27, 2023

Jean, a dear friend, stopped by this week giving me a book of poems by David Whyte. I hadn’t read him before, so I immediately turned to the first one.

For the Road to Santiago

For the road to Santiago,

don’t make new declarations

about what to bring

and what to leave behind.

Bring what you have.

You were always going

that way anyway,

you were always

going there all along.

I was stunned. In nine simple lines, the poet broke through my lost stare and gave me a new way to imagine, a new word to name, this time I am going through. I gasped when I read it, and Jean just smiled at me.

I have understood that I am on a healing journey. But the poem speaks of pilgrimage, the road to Santiago being a well-traveled pilgrimage taken by thousands in Europe each year. In my mind, there is a difference between a journey and a pilgrimage. The purpose of a journey is usually to get somewhere. It may ultimately be life-changing, but its goal is more defined. The pilgrimage is entirely transformational in purpose. It is undertaken with change in mind. What kind of change? That is not up to the pilgrim to determine, but to the ability to give oneself fully over to the vagaries of the pilgrimage. To define it too clearly would be to close oneself off to all the possibilities. So “don’t make new declarations about what to bring and what to leave behind.”

I have surrounded myself these days with items and books that I had hoped would break through my emotional and mental stuckness. Topics and things I have been drawn to. Lot’s of John O’Donahue and other Celtic spirituality, candles and books about meditation, a tome about Elderhood which I have wanted to study, books given me by friends, even bought a new deep forest green journal! The book in front of me was given to me while I was still in the hospital – The 7 Deadly Sins of White Christian Nationalism by one of my favorite feminist theologians, Carter Heyward. This calls to my activist side, but now, in this current place, I seem unable to break it open. (Though at some point, I will!)

The truth is that I’ve been broken open and I don’t know what is still left in me of me. So, the poet writes, “Bring what you have.” At this point, I know I have this longing to be preset to what is and a desire to write. To connect. To discover what is inside now and how I can contribute to life. This pilgrimage demands only that I stay awake. Allow myself to be led. To be changed. I want to say “to find myself lost in love.” To find myself lost. I am part way there.

Healing Journey

Rev. Dr. Kate Winters, May 22, 2023

I shake my head as I check this week’s calendar. On tomorrow’s space, May 23rd, I had written “Breaking Silence.” Never had I made a plan that had run so far off the rails as this one. I was longing for silence and what it would teach me when the universe decided there was another kind of journey I needed to take.

Instead of mystics and hermits, I was led into it by cardiologists and hematologists, the high priests of medicine. No matter how much I wanted to protest, I knew it would be to my own peril. So I had to give myself over – body, mind, and spirit.

The first few days after surgery are kind of lost to a maze of faces and medications. Fortunately, the most constant face was of my beloved Joel who kept telling me that I was alright. Most of the faces were kind, but none could anchor me like his, could remind me that I was still me in this very unfamiliar place, perhaps a bit lost, but still able to be found.

So, tomorrow I was meant to break my three month silence but instead I am going to see my surgeon for our sugical follow-up. Perhaps he will discharge me out of the hallowed halls of Maine Med back to life as I knew it, with some cardiac rehab on the side.

Will I then pursue my initial plan of silence? I think I need to begin with what I am needing now. I did not expect to be on such an intense healing journey. And I kid not when I say this journey is one step forward and two steps back. Well, maybe it is not that precise. There are also steps of side to side and times of simply standing in place. I knew this was true of emotional healing, but now I know that the body’s is not linear as well. And damn, this can be frustrating!

BLANK

Rev. Dr. Kate Winters, Monday, May 15, 2023

I locate my journal and pull out a pen. Am I wishful thinking? Is there something in me to share this morning? And if there is, do I have the presence and clarity of mind to coax it out? This is all new to me. I named my blog “Dwelling in Presence” with the desire to simply be attentive to life and its colors, all of its various shades and moments. This is a new shade for me. If I had to name it, I think I would call it “Blank”. I can spend hours just sitting and staring. Cups of coffee sit cooling and undrunk. No inspiration there. I am vaguely aware of the birdsong outside. Mom’s owl hasn’t been back since we came home from the hospital, or perhaps I have just not heard it. Yes. Blank.

The visiting nurse is coming this morning. Maybe I need a visiting poet or a visiting shaman to restore the wonder I seem to have misplaced right now. They could speak an incantation over me, and my broken open heart might start working again.

Joel keeps telling me that I am doing much more than I think I am, that my whole body is involved in healing itself. Some of it is visible on the outside where wounds are starting to scab over. Most of it is happening on the inside where a major bone was broken and wired together, vessels were rearranged, and someone elses blood was poured in to keep me strong. I survived for a while on a heart-lung machine while my heart of flesh was getting important upgrades.

Now I sit here looking and feeling essentially blank. With all that has happened, you would think my mind would be firing on all cylinders. My feelings popping. My cup runnething over. But no. My body’s wisdom has caused a certain numbness while I begin to own what happened to me. Of all things I expected to experince after a successful surgery, grief wasn’t one of them. What is my body trying to make conscious in me? What, indeed, have I lost?

There is nothing else to do. Just be.

Dull Moon

Rev. Dr. Kate Winters, Friday, May 12, 2023

The quarter moon is high in the sky this morning, but it is not shining. Its light is muted and dull, appearing as if it has lost some important source of energy. If I had not heard yesterday that wild fire smoke in Canada is casting shadows across Maine skies, I would be convinced that the moon is displaying empathy for me. A dull, heavy light seems to be about all I am capable of right now.

Yes, in the past week I experienced some of the most amazing miracles of modern medicine, and I know my gratitude will surface at some point. But we forget that great suffering often accompanies these miracles. I had a front row seat to that of my own as well as to the deep pain of others. It leaves its mark. Most of all, I am aware that as I am back at home surrounded by the colors of spring, the same drama and trauma is being played out minute by minute down on the cardiac wing of Maine Med. The CNAs and other caregivers are for me right now the surest signs of God’s presence on earth.

I don’t where where it will go from here. But I cannot really force any meaning out of it right now. I am tired. These, I guess, are the days of the dull moon. I didn’t even know there was such a thing. I hope I can learn from it.

Gratitude

Rev. Dr. Kate Winters, May 3, 2023

I haven’t written in a few days. Well, that’s not quite true, I’ve written two posts that I just couldn’t publish. Why? Is there something called too much honesty? Of course not! But I think I felt too exposed by my words.

The first one was primarily written to thank all of you who have read these words I’m sending out. You have rewoven a kind of community for me when I most needed one after retiring from my ministry calling. Your words have been encouraging and supportive (most of these posted on Facebook, but also a few here). And I have loved reconnecting with people from far away and long ago! I’ve been telling myself I want to establish a writing ministry, but truth be told, I have always needed a circle of beloveds with open hearts. People who always prove to me what my teacher Henri Nowwen used to say – “What is most personal, is most universal.” Which totally argues against what I said above about being too exposed! Forgive me, my anxiety has risen in these days as we head to Portland this morning and I’m not thinking very clearly. But I feel deep gratitude for all of you.

The second was about the connection of body and spirit. I was asking what happens to the spirit when the body is rearranged? Which is what is going to happen during this surgery – veins from my leg and my chest being used to feed the heart more sufficiently, my heart stopped and started again after the breaking of my sternum.

My theology has always been deeply incarnational. I believe that God speaks through our bodies, something I learned from my childhood lessons on Jesus. I don’t expect to die, and I know I am not Jesus, but it’s hard to imagine that the spirit will flow through me and in me in quite the same way as before. What will this teach me? And, as I have written before, one of my biggest challenges in life is letting go – giving myself over to something that I cannot control. This will certainly be a major lesson. So, who will I be when I wake up? What will have changed? I pray I get to write about it on the other side.

Finally, I thank you for all your prayers and good thoughts this week. I feel them. I also feel my mother’s presence as her Christmas cactus is fully blooming this morning as if she is sending me flowers! And, of course, spring is blooming all around us. It is a sure reminder that life keeps being born again in new forms, in beautiful ways, in vibrant color. All is gift.