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The Profound Truth of Holy Saturday

Rev. Dr. Kate Winters

I stepped out onto the deck just before four this morning to a deep and blessed silence. The traffic we often hear from the nearby highway had not yet begun. Not a single bird was singing, though I knew it wouldn’t be long. The sky held a just-beyond-full moon, with a smattering of stars. Nothing was moving. Yesterday’s winds had died. It felt like a vacuum.

I waited and I listened. Then I remembered. It is Holy Saturday. The day in between. A day of true liminality, filling the space between life and death. Or in this case, death and life. For me, it is a most mysterious day of the Christian year. The tomb is not empty. What do we do with that?

Honestly, I think that we who have followed and planned for the liturgical year have missed the boat on this one. Putting all our energy into a stirring Palm Sunday, a rich Maundy Thursday, an often excruciating Good Friday, and a trimphant Easter Sunday, Saturday has often gone by unnoted and unnoticed.

I can almost hear my clergy colleagues moan – “What does she want us to do, another over the top liturgy to plan and execute?” Isn’t there enough exhaustion at the end of these days? My baby sister who is married to an Episcopal priest calls this time “Holy Hell Week,” and though some may be scandalized, most of us understand. As I wrote on Thursday, we are moving through the rapids with little down time to float.

So, how have we missed the boat on this day? We have missed honoring the profound truths of the tomb on Holy Saturday. That death is real and a part of the Christian, the human, story. That silence is not to be avoided. That the deep and the dark can be the most fertile place for our our spirits to grow. That a rising not only takes a dying, but a resting in the unknown. The tomb involves the ultimate letting go, there is nothing more to do, but there is still a power that can be working on our transformation. But to get there, everything that is familiar to us must die. All that we love needs to be let go. The tomb is the cold, hard reality that all of us must enter before having any glimpse of new light.

I have spent a good deal of my life running away from various tombs, various endings, never realizing that they were invitations to deep rest, silence, and transformation. The three months of silence that I was planning for in retirement before my health issues appeared may have been an attempt to reverse this – to run toward the silent and tansforming tomb instead of away. But perhaps it is the job of life to take us to them, our job to receive when our time is at hand.

This year, I will practice Holy Saturday as a day for receiving the dark mysterious and unknown. Perhaps I will take a walk in Grove Cemetary in communion with all the spirits I have loved there. I will try not to run away from the death that feeds so much of life. For indeed, we do have a God of both.

Out of the Rapids, Into the Depths

Rev. Dr. Kate Winters

It is Thursday of Holy Week, in the middle of what I used to call the “rapids” or the “whitewater” of the river of time that is the Christian liturgical year. It has always been a bumpy ride from the ecstatic jubilation of Palm Sunday, to the astounding power of sharing a simple table with one’s community on this day, to the utter desolation and grief on Friday, to gathering to prepare the setting for an open grave on Saturday, to the flowers and trumpets of Easter Sunday. For over thirty years, my job was to guide the craft through the thrilling and dangerous waters.

Here now I sit with my candle, coffee, and journal, a different kind of Holy Week. More reflective than roiling, thinking of Maundy Thursdays past. It was this day’s celebration that called me to be ordained in the church at all. My desire was not really to preach or to lead a congregation, but I longed to have the privilege and the joy of gathering the beloveds around the common table to experience the presence of God – in the bread and the wine, the elements of earth, and in one another. I wanted to be able to look the gathered straight into the eyes and reflect back their goodness as Jesus willed to do in his life. I desired to do my part in weaving together the tender and beautiful body of Christ as we celebrated in true communion. It is this whole body that is the sacrament – the miraculous life of God in the ordinary.

Even in retirement, I retain this calling. This blog, Dwelling in Presence, is my attempt at finding and naming the sacred in all aspects of our lives. In our joys, disapppointments, in our pain, fears, even in our physicality. As at the table on Maundy Thursday, brokenness is blessed. Feet are washed. Wounds are healed. The goodness of God is tasted. Life and death, joy and grief, loom together in one dance. In it all, Christ is present.

And, of course, the mandate (the origin of the word “Maundy”) is received. “Love one another as I have loved you.” What better sign of the sacred in the world, how clear a sacrament, is a community rooted and growing in love. The love that can’t help itself from reaching out, spreading, as it dwells and moves as God’s presence in the world. I may not be taken up by the whitewater today, but I am feeling pulled down into the depths of what this week, this faith, is all about.

Disorientation

Rev. Dr. Kate Winters

Fragments of bad dreams swirl in my head as I get up today, taunting my usually joyful morning spirit. It was a busy night, so many of my personal fears and flaws dancing before me. I am walking down Avenue L in Canarsie (the section of Brooklyn where I grew up) in a fierce storm. I call my mother to come and get me, but she refuses. Then I am in an office workplace, totally incapable of completing the simplest task, and no one will explain anything to me. Finally, I am abandoned by someone who was my friend as she goes off with someone else while nothing looks familiar around me. I am totally lost.

Upon waking I am filled with unsettled feelings – disorientation, loss, most certainly abandonment. I realize this is a new phase of my retirement. The novelty and celebration of it is over. Some wounds need to be tended to.

It is a common practice in many church denominations including my own for the pastor to fully leave their faith community upon retirement to prepare the congregation to accept and embrace the new pastor. So after nearly two decades of pouring our hearts and souls into our church, Joel and I need to find another place for all that love to go. What is it said about grief – that all it is is love with no place to go? The grief of this time is enormous and disorienting.

It would not be appropriate for me to question the wisdom of this denominational practice now except to say that I would welcome the opportunity to support the new pastor of the community I have loved. And if that means bearing this grief, then that’s what it means. I do wish there was a better and gentler way.

In the meantime, I know my calling – to keep loving. Perhaps if I didn’t have a major surgery in a few weeks, I would be seeking new ways to reach out to the Belfast community. My dreams could then be less about disorientation and more about new connections. We both will need to reorient ourselves to this place as we own a home here.

But honestly, it is already beginning. The wildlife on our land have surrounded us with welcome. Deer, turkey, various birds, even a few squirrels have worked at being entertaining. I am still waiting for the moose in the backyard. The daffodils and tulips are inching out of the ground. Finally the piles of snow have melted off the back deck and I am free to go outside to listen for the barred owl in the woods. When she calls, I know my grief will be lifted and I will be home.

A Visit to the Surgeon

Rev. Dr. Kate Winters

Joel and I are finally going to meet the heart surgeon today. Hopefully by the end of the visit, I will have a date for my triple bypass surgery. I do know that I will finally have all the gory details of the operation. This, I think, is good. I have a strong tendency to immediately make some kind of meaning out of things before facing the physical reality of them.

For example, one of my first posts dealt with how this surgery would reroute the meaning and activity of my retirement – from a plan to keep three months of silence to having a lesson in letting go and surrender. I had already set up a spiritual goal for the surgery before acknowledging the fact that my sternum was going to be broken, my chest entered, veins removed from God knows where to replace or assist the blocked ones. My heart will be stopped for some time and I will be put on a bypass machine that will keep me alive while new pathways are created for blood to feed my heart. Yes, I’ve been reading, which is another way I deal with the frightening unknown. Although I’d much rather deal with the spiritual meaning than the physical reality of what will happen to me. However, is this not a miracle, the fact that the heart can be stopped, worked on, then started again to heal a human body?

Okay, there is that little doubt…what if it refuses? What if my heart decides, “Thank you very much, but I am tired and would like to enjoy this sleep?” How might I ask the surgeon this question? But really, isn’t this God’s domain? Will this not be a “thin place” where life meets death, where the skill of the human surgeon meets the life-giving will of God?

I have heard that heart patients tend to get more emotional after this kind of surgery. They feel things more deeply and cry more easily. Is there something about entering that liminal place between life and death that deepens our emotional connections with all other beings, our sensitivity to the fragility of life on this earth? There I go again, into the realm of the Spirit rather than acknowledging that there will be pain and pain fosters tears. On the other hand, haven’t I been learning that the realm of the Spirit and the realm of the body are completlely intertwined?

So, today I will meet the surgeon, Dr. Buchanan, the man who will literally hold my life in his hands. Yes, I have some fear, but mostly I am grateful that I have this opporunity to have my life extended, a life full of joy, of love, and of meaning. I pray that I am open to all the lessons of this time, both spiritual and physical. And that Joel can put up with an even more emotional me!

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.

The First Image

Rev. Dr. Kate Winters

I’ve had many images and understandings of God in my lifetime. Like many, I began with the stereotypical ancient man in the clouds. I remember the day he came alive for me. I was about six when Sister Joseph at Holy Family School asked me to give a little welcoming speech for the bishop who was coming to bless a new wing of the building. Now, I did not know what a bishop was, but I knew something big was happening as the nuns were all aflutter for weeks before the event.

The day of the celebration came and despite all the Blessed Mother statues displayed in the windows of the convent to assure good weather, the rain came down harder than I ever remembered, then or since. The few young priests were running around in bathing suits bailing out the school basement, proving that they did have bodies under those vestments. A bit scandalous.

I was prepared at home, dressed in a baby blue fluffy gown embroidered with daisies and a little daisy crown placed on my very blond head, white patent leather shoes and white gloves completing the outfit. When we got to the school, my father scooped me in his arms to carry me up the many stairs to the main entrance as the rain poured down. He put me down in the lobby that was abuzz with school faculty, news reporters, and parish priests in more appropriate attire.

At the appointed time, a space was cleared and I was placed in the middle of it. Then the principal’s door opened. Out stepped a very tall magisterial figure dressed in a gold and white robe, a golden mitre on top of his head, with staff in hand. I remember the moment clearly. I took a startled step back and whispered “It’s God…”

I must have been put on remote control. “Your excellency, we here at Holy Family School are so pleased that you have honored us by coming…” That’s all I remember. That and the flashing of light bulbs as I was directed numerous times to kiss the ring on God’s finger as the soaked cameras failed.

At the time, I was taught that kissing this ring offered an “indulgence,” a certain number of days or years off your time in purgatory for atonement of your sins. I’m sure I’ve used up my allotment by now, if only for the fact that after much work and stuggle, I finally smashed that particular image of God. Many have since replaced it.

For the last few years, I have preached about God as the great broken-open heart of the cosmos. I’m curious to find what my upcoming heart bypass surgery will teach me about that. I’ve learned that the body has wisdom the mind only catches up with later.

The Moose in my Backyard

Rev. Dr. Kate Winters

Okay, there is no moose in my backyard. At least, not yet. That doesn’t mean that I am not waiting in anticipation for a sighting. We have woods surrounding the west side of our two acres and you never know what is going to emerge. We have had deer, fox, mink, many turkey, a fisher cat, and what I swear was a wolf. Joel insists it must have been a coyote, but he didn’t see it! Luckily the morning I saw the bobcat walk past the house, he was able to catch its little bobbed tail before it disappeared into the trees. He might have questioned this sighting as well.

I know that many people visit our state hoping for a moose sighting. My dear sisters are among them, and they have yet to have their encounter. Until they do, I am going to have to put up with their ribbing declaration to me “There are no moose in Maine.” It doesn’t matter that we have seen many, have ph0tos to prove it, nearly collided with one in the car (which no one ever wants to do), and caught another running down a neighbor’s driveway right in the middle of town one early morning.

I get it. Until you’ve had your own enounter, it is hard to believe that such a majestic, some would say strange, creature exists. It is the same with God, isn’t it? You can hear all the reports, been told the awesome stories, but until you recognize anything you acknowledge as divine yourself, it all seems unbelievable.

However, there is always that moose in your backyard. The one that keeps you alert and hoping. The one that stirs your imagination, invites your keen attention, and fuels your search. I love that moose already, and although I haven’t yet seen him/her, its promise keeps my heart open and fuels my soul. Daily.

My hope is to write a book someday entitled The Moose in My Backyard: Spiritual Life in Maine. I’ve had so many images for God in my lifetime, but moose? Proof that the divine shows up in many shapes and sizes, keeping the fire burning in the soul.

Faces of God

Rev. Dr. Kate Winters

Having risen later than usual, I have company as I write. I can see Joel in the kitchen gathering ingredients for a pot roast stew we will share tonight with Julie, a friend coming to visit from Wisconsin. He whistles as he gathers the onions and goes to the refrigerator for the carrots. Everyone can tell when Joel arrives to a place by that ever-present whistle. He brings with it a spirit that is light and kind. The atmosphere is changed when he walks into a room. Yes, I have a bias towards my husband, but there aren’t too many people who would disagree with me. Except, perhaps, for those who have a problem with joy.

The friend flying in from Wisconsin also has a very particular presence. A nurse, health and wellness instructor, and spiritual director, Julie’s face is one of deep compassion. She has a way of stilling turbulent hearts. It was to her house I needed to go after my mother suddenly died. I was beside myself with anxiety and grief. She brought me back to myself where I could begin to face this new reality. Once her pastor, she now encourages my spirit to grow and expand in new ways. Her presence is one of healing.

The book I am currently reading is by Howard Thurman, theologian, pastor, and mystic of the 20th century. A man of his time, the language of his book Meditations of the Heart is heavily masculine, particularly in references to God. But for some reason I am not as disturbed by it as I usually am. His spirit feels wide and inclusive. I am finding that he names some things that I have felt in my experience lately that give me peace. He writes: “A ground of calm underlies experiences whatever may be the tempestuous character of events. This calm is the manifestation in life of the active, dynamic presence of God.” (p. 29)

In the hospital, just after my heart catheterization and being told I needed triple bypass surgery, I found in the midst of it a deep calm flooding through me. A kind of comforting silence. Yes, I am afraid, but there is something in me deeper than my fear. With Rev. Thurman I can only attribute this to the “actve, dynamic presence of God.”

On this snowy morning, God has come to me in three faces. The face of my beloved, whistling Joel, the face of my dear friend, Julie, and the face of a deceased author who somehow shares my experience. Joy, healing, and peace are mine in this moment. With what face does the presence of God come to you?

Growing Edge

Rev. Dr. Kate Winters

You may have heard the saying “We make plans and God laughs.” It is a blunt way of saying how little control we ultimately have over our lives. I’ve never liked the phrase. I think God has more respect for the plans, the hopes, and the dreams we build for ourselves. The one who created us would not laugh as we use the gifts we have been given to chart our life’s course. I don’t think God was laughing at me when I planned to go into silence for three months at the beginning of my retirement. But perhaps my plan was too much like those I have set up before – relying on myself, my willpower and determination to achieve something. Surviving a divorce. Earning a Ph.D. Going back to seminary to become ordained in the United Church of Christ. No, I never really did these things by myself, but the initial plans were mine. I was determined to make them happen. And they did.

Perhaps God was aware that I would learn nothing by shouldering through three months of silence. That was not going to be my path to growth. That was not going to bring me to wholeness/holiness/union. At least not until I learned to “let go.” Let go of my plan. Let go of my tendency to accomplish things by myself. To put myself in the hands of others, in the hands of sweet compassion.

No, I don’t believe God “gave” me heart disease to teach me a lesson. That is not the work of love, and the God I believe in is infinite love. My challenge now is not to shoulder on, but to let go into that love.

Letting go into love has never been easy for me. I have never felt worthy of it, thus I consistently tried to deserve it, to prove my worth. Why? Perhaps it was reading all those Catholic saint books when I was a child. Or the Monseigneur handing out report cards at Holy Family School telling me my dad is going to “love me” after seeing the straight A’s. I can still feel his hand on my head! I don’t know, perhaps it is just a frustrating part of my personality. It doesn’t really matter why. I only know that after reading the booklet I was given at the hospital about bypass surgery, what struck me most was how completely I had to give myself over to another’s care…and for how long. How I will need to rely on the skill, plans, and goodness of others without doing a thing to deserve it!

I don’t think that God is laughing here. The voice of the Spirit is soothing as it whispers “Let go, dear Kate. Let go. Let yourself be held.” Here is my growing edge.

From Presence of Mind to Body

Rev. Dr. Kate Winters

Even though retirement is not going as planned, I thought I would be steeped in silence by now, it is taking some kind of shape. One pleasant surprise is my growing desire to write. About three years ago I made a fledgling attempt to blog at the beginning of the pandemic quarantine. I finished perhaps two posts. My perfectionist self appeared and would not let me go beyond that until I had everything set up the way I wanted it to be. I struggled with the way I wanted to be perceived and with accepting help. My desire to make some kind of impression eclipsed my desire to write.

This time is different. I haven’t yet figured out a number of things about the site, such as how I can arrange it to get responses from readers which I would like, or how to change the font on my post, or even how to get people to read the blog! But every day or two I feel compelled to write. The desire seems to come from some unconscious place in my body, not my thinking brain. In fact, many mornings I have my journal open on my lapdesk and pen in hand before having any idea of what I want to write about! But then I call to mind the name of my blog, Dwelling in Presence, and realize that if I just stay present, aware of my surroundings, my feelings, my connection to Spirit, my heart beating, the pen will soon become engaged, and I will surmise my subject! Usually it is about something I need to learn. I’d love to hear how it works for others.

Yesterday I learned that the silence I am seeking begins somewhere in my body. In a place wider and deeper than my ever active brain. To be sure, I am not clear what this means, but I will keep exploring it now that my body has gotten my attention…but did it have to do so in such a dramatic way? Heart disease? Perhaps so. It is healing a life-long pattern.

Initially I named this blog Dwelling in Presence to refer to a quality of mindfulness, a function of the mind’s attention. While I think this is key to the journey I am on, the ability to focus and rest my mind on the presence in the present, the indwelling of God, my heart has already made it known that it has been ignored and taken for granted along with the rest of my body. I am literally heart-broken. I pray to be restored to wholeness.