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Rev. Kate Winters

If I didn’t wake up in a hotel room in Portland this morning, I would have thought I was rousing from a bad dream. But no, here I am with a large compression type bandage on my right wrist. Fortunately, writing doesn’t require any heavy lifting, at least of the physical kind.

Actually, nothing really has changed since yesterday. The heart disease I now know I have was already present…I am just newly aware of it. Aware that it is serious enough to warrant bypass surgery in the next month or so. This awareness is blessing though the fear it has elicited is not. Truth be told, and truth is my main endeavor, I do not feel fear this morning. My mind is as quiet as when the resonant bell rings to begin my meditation, but without all the necessary intention. There is a clear and open space waiting to be filled, but it is staying blessedly empty.

This is a surprise. Though perahps it should not be. I feel as if I am no longer in my own hands. It is not fully up to me to fill the seconds, the minutues, the hours ahead. My rational, fixit brain has come to a halt. My body is telling me that now I am in its realm and it is time to listen to its rhythms and needs. This is new for me.

So here I am writing, letting my body take center stage. I am grateful to my embodied self that it continues to feel this writing as a desire, almost a need. Writing has always been a physical process for me, connecting outside and inside through the dance of my fingers around the pen. There seems to be something of incarnation in this – though in reverse. Turning body into word.

Right now, my body is at peace.

I am realizing that nothing steals my inner silence more than a continual stream of doctor appointments. I feel like I’ve had more blood taken out of me than I have in me right now! Yes, there is anxiety about the catheterization coming up Thursday, but even more than that is a frustration, even resentment, about how this retirement experience is shaping up so far. I was hoping for peace and open spaces. Instead, I have a calendar full of tests, labs, and procedures.

On the other hand, I have been the recipient of great kindness. A new cardiologist who takes time and listens, actually seeming to care about what happens to me. My first visit to a hematologist in an oncology lab brought me to a place of great suffering, but there was a sense of calm and joy in that office. Both the doctor and the nurse, used to dealing with fear, both looked me straight in the eyes and seemed determined to help me. I felt I could rest in that care. Skill certainly helps to heal the body, but it is surely kindness that heals the spirit.

The day after tomorrow, I will have the main event, the heart catheterization at Maine Med in Portland. After these few weeks, my hopes and expectations have changed a bit. Yes, I expect to have doctors and nurses who are skilled and will practice that skill on me. But my fervent hope is that I will find a place where I can sink into kindness. That will certainly bring calm and blessing to my heart long before my arteries are explored!

It is anaesthesia that allows us to totally let go our bodies into another’s hands, but it is kindness that allows us to go there in trust. And that is where the healing begins.

The sky is a soft peach hue in the east this morning with a deep aqua edging that fades into ice blue. I think of my mother Ann, who spent her young life in the Canarsie section of Brooklyn, moving later in life to Wilton and then Simsbury, Connecticut surrounded by tall trees instead of city lights and buildings. She always longed to be able to look out and see the whole sky. Her happy place was the ocean’s edge when visiting Maine where she could see an endless vista of sky and sea. And, of course, many little grandchildren frolicking in the foreground.

I admired my mother who knew what she wanted and what she loved, especially her sweetheart from high school, my father Jack. When he returned from war in Korea, together they began from a cold water flat in the city to make their dreams a reality. They did a spectacular job.

I sit here in a house I own under the peach to blue sky in large part because of their industriousness and love. They gave us the financial cushion to make it possible. I am sure this was one of their goals – the security of their five kids, eleven grandchildrren, and seven and counting greatgrands. We are all housed, fed, and comfortable.

I often wonder what they would think about their eldest daughter now, retired from a career in ministry (more a vocation than a career, but can one retire from a calling?), and planning an extended foray into silence. I expect my mom would work to understand it, we’d have a few long conversations, likely beginning with the questions – “But what is this going to do to Joel?” “How is it going to affect your relationship?” She’d relax a little when I tell her that he is looking forward to it, that it will give him some time to do his own soul-searching.

Now my dad, he would likely shake his head. But at this point, he would be used to this child who always chose to take a path he did not understand. Or agree with. Why get three advanced degrees in religious studies and ministry and then choose to pastor in small country and coastal churches, instead of having a respectable academic career? I am fortunate to be able to say that though he did not often understand me, he always loved me, and I him.

In reality, it was my father’s encouragement to attend college, even the Jesuit one that he blamed for “ruining” me, that fostered my desire to explore the life of the Spirit. To seek the riches of silence and live a contemplative life. Perhaps, had we begun our marriage in a cold water flat, having just endured a war, Joel’s and my path would have been different, shaped by other dreams and needs.

But I don’t know. I seem to have been haunted by God since childhood. Sh/he, they, it won’t let me go. Perhaps it began with attending to the skies in the morning.

Many years ago while studying at Yale Divinity School, I took a class with pastoral theologian Dr. James Dittes. I don’t remember the name of the class, but I can tell you exactly what he said about my writing. “Kate, your writing reminds me of the dog who when getting ready to sleep circles around her bed over and over until she finally drops in.” I didn’t know whether to be pleased or insulted, but in the decades hence his words have come back to me often.

Yes, I do have a tendency to circle. I rarely get right to it, but spend a good anticipatory time in preparation for about everything. Which usually has meant going to Staples in search of the right pens, notecards, paper, filing system. Or on a home project, taking time to plan and seek out the appropriate tools is always more engaging than jumping right in, although not always more effective. The tools often sit unused for weeks. I saw a book recently entitled Stop Buying Bins. I think it may have been written for me.

But when I think about the primary subject matters of this blog – the presence of the sacred and the movement of the spirit – it may be that my method is a helpful one. For how does one write directy about mystery? How can I write about something so constantly present, but so difficult to define? How can anyone go right to the heart of God?

It’s like love. If someone were to ask me to tell them about the love I have for my husband Joel, what else could I do but circle around the apects of it – the kindness, the trust, the joy I have in being with him, the sense of home we have together? How could I just get to the point and say what that love is? Not without losing all the essence.

I don’t have a “to the point” definition of God. I cannot simply settle down into the sacred. But I can circle round and round, ever drawing near the center. Who knows, some day like the tired dog looking for rest, I will just drop in? But I doubt words will ever be able to describe it.

From Let Us Dance! The Stumble and Whirl with the Beloved by Chelan Harkin, book gifted to me by Amy Fiorelli. Thank you, Amy.

I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO CALL IT

I don’t know what to call it

so I call it God:

that exquisite flowering of every

piece of me I had once

relegated to the shadows

or what happens

when poetry

opens its fist

in my heart

setting light free.

The seed didn’t know what to call it either.

This Song.

This Relationship.

This thing that led

to the exquisite unfoldment

of my own Nameless Self.

If you come up

with a better name

let me know.

Until then I’ll call it God,

that One who moves me to dip

the cup of consciousness

into the waters

of existence

and whispers

from every ordinary,

precious moment,

“drink deep.”

Saturday, February 18, 2023

An inch of snow fell last night, brightening the landscape. It really is too early for dirty snow season. And truth be told, I needed this small blessing.

Yesterday did not go the way I had hoped. I took a stress test at the hospital on Wednesday morning. Thursday I was called to have a meeting with a cardiologist. I should have known that something was up, but hoping for a diet and exercise routine, my optimism was quickly dashed. I am now being scheduled for a heart catheterization at Maine Med in Portland some time in the next few weeks. Apparently the test showed a few abnormalities that indicate some kind of blockage.

Now, every time Joel and I would take vacation from work, I would inevitably get sick. My body would relax and all hell would break loose. I should have expected something with the advent of our retirement. But this, this wasn’t it. I sat there while the doctor, a very young, cute, and thorough professional, explained to me the procedure, all the risks and what could be expected and thought “No. I don’t want this. This wasn’t supposed to happen.” But then I realized with my family’s history, my dad had his first heart attack in his sixties, and my mother died instantly from some kind of heart-related event, this was perhaps what needed to happen for me.

No, I wouldn’t have chosen this detour into the medical world as the first big event of retirement, but it is what it is. It certainly may be to my benefit. So now, the challenge – to continue to dwell in the present and in the presence. God isn’t any less in these moments than in the ones I would have chosen. But I find myself trying to escape them – launching myself into the future, past the worry and the fear. Or burying myself in anxiety and worry, neither of which deepens me into the present moment. All of this brings brings me away from life as it is happening right now – the golden sun coming up behind the pines, the newly fallen snow, the coffee I am enjoying in my favorite mug, the light just hitting the forest in the back yard making the hemlocks glow, the fact that I can see all of this sitting in our living room as I write. Is this not paradise?

I realize that my heart has become very real and present to me in a way it wasn’t before. I send it healing thoughts. Perhaps dwelling in the presence enhances our connections with all things around us. As well as in us.

The following is from This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories that Make Us by Cole Arthur Riley, p. 67. I highly recommend this book given to me for my birthday by Joy Longfellow. Thank you, Joy!

“I’m learning to befriend my body again. It does not always move the way I want it to, but I have made a commitment that if it ceases to move at all, if I lose all control and agency, if my hands go numb in the night and never wake again, even still I will not forsake my body. ,,,To be people capable of extending welcome to the body, even those bodies the world discards and demeans, is to be people of profound liberation. By this we will know our faith. We will stay whole.” p. 67

February 16, 2023

A breathtaking crescent moon accompanies me as I write this morning. She reminds me that there is nothing like the moon in a dark sky to bring me to immediate silence. Like the Tibetan bell we used to ring before worship, she has the effect of instantly hushing my mind and calling me to complete attention. I am immediately under her spell and spend many minutes taking in her beauty.

Last evening, Joel and I watched “In Pursuit of Silence,” a movie that led to the book I am reading now, Notes on Silence. The movie and the book include beautiful photographs, essays and interviews with people who are in some kind of conscious relationship with silence – seeking it, studying it, reveling in it, grieving the loss of it. Now that I think of it, I don’t remember any particular images of the moon. Tall treed forests and winds through grassy fields, yes. Walking trails on monastery grounds, even one of those rooms with negative decibels level of sound, but no moon. It makes me want to ask people what brings them to immediate silence. (When I can figure out how to get you to be able to respond on this blog, please tell me!) Perhaps there are “bells” everywhere that hush people in different ways. Mine is the moon.

I was pleased when after watching the movie together, Joel told me that it helped him to understand my desire and plan for the ninety day silence. Pleased but also surprised that he didn’t fully understand it already. It was when we first started living together thirty years ago that I asked him not to speak to me in the early morning. He could give me a morning kiss, but that was it! Once the silence is broken in my mornings, the whole momentum and feeling of the day changes. While pastoring the church together, we got out of that habit. There was always something that had to be said. But in retirement, I’d like to return to that protocol in preparation for the “great silence” to come. My three months, not death!

Although I am some weeks away from beginning my three month period of silence, I am already learning some important things in anticipation. Reactivating the blog I began during the pandemic quarantine brought me the first, second, and third painful lesson.

First, when I started this particular blog two years ago, Karan, a dear friend and graphic artist, offered to help set up a most professional looking and beautiful blog site out of the goodness of her heart. I was most grateful, yet soon learned that though I love to learn from others, I like to do things for myself. But because she was so generous and excited for me, I didn’t know how to tell her. In fact, she is only learning this as I write. Not knowing how to gracefully decline or accept the help I needed (becoming more of a Mainer as I live here), I became overwhelmed and just ghosted the project…and sadly, my friend. A terrible thing to do. It also ended my project before it began, another big price to pay for my hardheadedness. Karan, I am sorry.

Next lesson. I seem to have a love/hate relationship with words. Is this a common trait of writers? I am fighting with them all the time. When I decided to resurrect this blog, I wanted to change its name. (Now, Karan could have told me immediately that this was the name of my “domain” and I couldn’t simply type in a substitute!) “Dwelling in Presence” began to feel too heavy, too pretentious, too something. I would go with something simpler like “Keeping Silence” or “Longing for God.” With a “How to start a Blog” book in hand, I tried to begin a new one thinking it would cancel out the older one. Well, it doesn’t. And now I have an extra hundred dollars on my credit card and “Deepening into Silence” is out there somewhere in the blogosphere. I can’t find it. All of this because I started fighting with my original words.

Of course, I spent hours trying to remedy the situation. I’ve learned that these “how to” books for beginners or non-techies like me never answer the actual questions you have. And perhaps this is my final lesson for today – never try to go it alone when the universe brings you a kind expert willing to help! After all these years in ministry during which I often preached that we need one another and that our lives lived in love are always give and take, you’d think I would have gotten the message.

FROM MY READING THIS WEEK:

“One’s inward journey oes not begin with a question or a hope – but a stillness. Not a destination, not a knowing – but an unknowing. A ceasing to strive. One does not begin to know themselves with a fiery passion – but a quiet stillness. Cassidy Hall, from Notes in Silence, p. 12.