Rev. Catharine Is Currently
On Medical Leave

Minor Feasts and Revelations

Dear hearts, welcome to the season of harvests and angels. This week gives us the feasts of the Archangels (also called Michaelmas), the Guardian Angel, and St. Francis of Assisi. And it’s just been fall equinox and the inevitable turn toward winter. Quite a collection of “minor holidays.” Mabon–one of the names for the fall […]

To Call on the Divine in Troubled Times

I dreamt of a fall moon service-sized ritual at sunset. The Stone Circle. A smallish group. Eric Eldritch, you had on your black tunic, only it was these striped, jagged yellow slashed lines. Jonathan White, you steadied me with your eyes. Patricia Althouse, Kailin Miller, and Patricia Robin Woodruff, you were there. Liliana Arrington, you […]

Samhain’s Ancient Grandmother

One Samhain That Samhain we sat in the third floor Aerie. That Samhain we sat on the floor in the dark. That Samhain we sat with a row of candles and lanterns marking a pathway. That Samhain we sat smelling the sweet incense. Between those lights, we sat on the floor in the dark and […]

Prayers for the Dead: All Souls

Blending in with the spirits, monsters, and long-legged beasties that go bump in the night. Carving turnips and later, pumpkins, into Jack O’Lanterns. Honoring the dead who move through the Veil between the worlds. Calling the names of the saints. Praying to our own Dead. There is a lot going on over the next few […]

Are We Grieving? (thoughts on some poetry)

There are two poems for fall that I love best. One, “Ode to the West Wind,” I’ve written about in Reflections. The other is by Gerard Manley Hopkins, one of my all-time favorite poems. (Check out “Pied Beauty” for sheer glory of words.) The Hopkins is called “Spring and Fall,” and has the dedication, “to […]

The Many Names of Rain

It’s raining. You live in the Pacific Northwest and it’s November, you say. Of course it’s raining. Winter is coming—or is here, depending on whose calendar you’re asking. And winter means rain, here on the northwest coast of the United States. But where I was born and where the landscape of my heart was carved, […]

Thank You

It’s nearly Thanksgiving, here in the US. It is a holiday I have often loved, despite its terribly convoluted political history and condition. It is a holiday mightily affected by cultural appropriation (and flat-out caricature), a holiday often grounded in an historical lie of peaceful encounters between peoples equal in power and affection, a holiday […]

I Speak Their Names

Any list of ancestors is incomplete. We are all one another’s ancestors. We are all creating the world they created and the world they left us. It is also we ourselves whom they have created left to this life and so we are among their greatest gifts. They continue, as we will continue, forever and […]

Why Relinquishment?

I wrote about the Season of Relinquishment the other day (thanks to my friend Jonathan who gave me the term), and it resonated with many of you. I’m thinking about that today. That resonance. Why do we need to hear about relinquishment so much? I think, in part, we need to hear about relinquishment because […]