retirement – Dwelling in Presence

“WANING” (?)

Rev. Dr. Kate Winters, “Dwelling in Presence,” January 6, 2024

A pretty quarter moon hovers over me as I write this morning. It is a waning moon, raising the question: What things are waning in my life these days? When I write this blog, I tend to focus on growth and addition, not contraction and diminishment. Perhaps that word, diminishment, is part of the problem. It hints at a lessening, a negative event, when maybe there are many ways that our lives enhanced by becoming somehow less, smaller, more circumscribed.

I am finding that growing older is an experience of waning, at least for me. The most obvious evidence of this is in comparing my appointment calendar of 2022 to the one of 2023. Now the first year of retirement is bound to have fewer engagements than the one before, having little to do with the reality of aging. Also, having major surgery in a year is bound to slow one down. But I did spend whole weeks without seeing anyone at all, except Joel of course. To be honest, that slower pace, having many periods of wide open days, seemed to suit me. It may be that growing older is allowing me to settle into my introverted nature a bit more, withhout an ounce of guilt! I could have been more actively engaged with others, but chose not to.

Accompanying the longer stretches of solitude, came more mindfulness in conversation, and thus the waning of idle chatter, perhaps a more judicious use of words. I have experienced conversation to be more intentional, with a larger purpose than just “talk”. It may be as we age we are less likely to want to stay on the surface with people. Teenage gabfests with friends were very enjoyable as were grad school “debates” about anything, but I really have no interest in repeating them. I feel a deeper urgency to get to the heart of things, to the heart of myself and others, and this seems to require less verbiage and more silences. Does this mean my social self is waning while something else is waxing? I don’t really know.

What else is waning thse days? I wish I could say it is my need to “please” people, but sady that seems to be hanging on. All wrapped up with caring about what others think of me, I’m afraid these will be two of my last ego traits to fall! But the good news is the more I can observe my thought patterns in the silence and solitude, the more I recognize it when these habits take over. I can, if I will it, stop!

One thing that has surprised me as I turn sixty-eight this week is that I have lost none of my drive to grow and perhaps have even increased in my ability to make personal changes. I am learning that the older I become, the less adamant I am to hold on to the old ways I used to think. Growing up I heard a lot about old people supposedly “stuck in their ways.” In my pastoral work I have found this to be more true of the young and the middle-aged than it is of their elders. Now, I am ready to learn new ways of being and thinking, my insistence on former ways is waning. Growing older is much more exciting than I thought!

THE TEACHER COMES

Rev. Dr. Kate Winters, “Dwelling in Presence,” Auguest 16, 2023

People become obsessed with their ego-driven goals, forgetting that the present moment is the source of well-being and fulfillment.” Kabir Helminski, Living Presence, p. 150

How is it that we can know something deep inside but not until someone articulates it in simple words, unearthing the insight from within, do we acknowledge the truth? It seems to me that a spiritual teacher is a kind of excavator who is able to wrest insight from the depths of our own awareness to make it available for our understanding and growth. I think this is what Jesus did. Not speaking in esoteric terms, he used words that would resonate down to the hearts of people, giving them access to inner wisdom that could transform their lives. Unless, of course, they were not quite ready. Think Nicodemus or the rich young man. On the flip side, think of the woman at the well. Yes, Jesus simply helped her to see what she already knew, but until then, hadn’t been able to trust. But once the light was shone on what was already in her heart, she could no longer contain it. She became the teacher.

Kabir Helminski, author of the book I mentioned a few posts back, seems to be my personal excavator right now. It reminds me of a phrase I heard long ago – “When you are ready, the teacher will come.” What has made me ready to learn at this time? Two things, I think – retirement and heart surgery. To be honest, I was truly dreading my retirement from The First Church in Belfast last January for so many reasons. Relationships would change. I would miss the people, especially the children. I would miss planning and leading worship, a passion of mine. I would miss preaching – I loved the whole process, from preparation and prayer, to the writing, to the sharing. Most of all, I knew I would miss having the identity and purpose of pastor. I had a recognized role to play in the community. I was afforded almost instant intimacy with people at sacred times in their lives – weddings, births, illnesses, and deaths. Being a pastor was all-consuming, and yes, at times, exhausting. But I knew who I was and what I was for.

I immediately discovered after retirement that though it was a major change, it wasn’t enough to make me ready for the next stage of my life. I let go of the church and my role, but not my preoccupations. If I wasn’t a pastor, who was I now? What could I do? How do I use all this education? Who could I perform for now (a powerful habit from childhood)? How can I give purpose to my life? Who was I meant to serve? What does God want of me?

After about eight weeks of this anxious questioning, my chest started to feel tight. I visited a cardiologist and within days I had a stress test, an echocardiogram, a heart catheterization, and was shocked to be told I needed triple bypass surgery. My focus changed to simple survival. The questions took a back seat and all I could do was submit to present need and allow myself to be cared for. Thank God for Joel in this time and for the doctors and skilled medical personnel who knew what they were doing.

Now, nearly four months later, I realize that the surgery was a necessary step in embracing this next phase of life. No, I do not think that the powers that be sent heart disease for this purpose. But I do think that the All Loving One regularly transforms suffering into wisdom and light. In this time, I was shown that the questions preoccupying me following retirement were very much of the ego, the very questions that I had been wrestling with all my life. Now, ego can be a helpful guide in life, but it can also subvert other kinds of growth that are available at this later stage.

So, enter Kabir Helminski, teaming up with my retirement and heart surgery, to guide me away from egoic striving and lead me into the Present. The Present – the very place that was calling me when I first heard in my heart – “Go into the silence.” I know I’ll be writing more about this later. For now, I can only say that the Present has brought me the cool morning breeze, the soothing waters, the call of the owl, the sway of the prairies grasses, blessed time and rest, and the smile of my beloved. In other words, joy.

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.

Keeping Silence

When I first went public with the intent to go into silence for three months, just about everyone asked the same question. “Aren’t you even going to talk to Joel?” Joel is my beloved husband who just recently retired along with me after co-pastoring an active church on midcoast Maine for the last eighteen years. Our personal and work lives have been so intertwined that it seemed impossible that I would make a decision to take this separate path. Especially while living in the same house.

The first thing I want to say is that keeping silence is about more than “not talking.” It is, I think, about attending to life and the world in a more intentional way, including attending to the man who lives in my house. We will not be fully separate in this silence.

But it will be different. We will not be filling our space with words, or at least, I won’t. My own spoken words, the television chatter, music lyrics, all will cease. I will be listening to and for something else, something I haven’t allowed myself much of since entering ministry, which is ironic since I do have a strong feeling that silence is the environment in which God dwells. I love Meister Eckhart’s assertion that there is “nothing so much like God as silence.” So I can pretty confidently say that all of this springs from my deep longing for God, whoever, wherever, and whatever that is!