Rev. Catharine Is Currently
On Medical Leave

The Gentleness of Questions’ Answers

Today, I intend to write in a way I haven’t done in this blog before. It is the way I wrote and spoke at my father’s memorial service. It is a way that I have written and spoken in sermons. I read the following poem this past week, and I want to share it with […]

Cynicism and Hope

This morning, I intended to write about core values, my Word of the Year, and how I discerned what I was after in a Word. But then my dear friend, Rev. Chris, got to talking. And over the course of our conversation, he asked me today whether there was any good or helpful place for […]

Why Writing? Part Three

The Examination of Consciousness The Examen, also called the Examination of Conscience or Examination of Consciousness (learned that last one from a Dominican Sister), is the last of the writing practices I’ll go over in this week’s posts. Unlike writing Morning Pages, journaling, or gratitude lists, the Examination of Consciousness is done in the evening. […]

Where There’s Despair, Hope

This week in Reflections, I wrote about love. About the difficult demands of u/Universalism. I wrote about how I cannot in good conscience, given my theology, write off everyone who voted for Trump as less than human. I can’t write off any of them as “other.” Not even the  ones who would or do wish […]

Creatures Have Limits

As I wrote earlier this week, human are limited creatures. In fact, all but God Herself, and maybe not even Them, are limited. We are limited. Our time in these particular configurations of empty space, energy, water, bacteria, and a wee bit of other stuff is limited. Furthermore, our space is limited. None of us […]

Thoughts on Beautiful Conversation

I used to say that I thought excellent conversation was better than sex. Now I hadn’t had much sex at the time, so… Still, excellent conversation, discussion, discourse, even archaically called “intercourse”—is a beautiful, beautiful thing. There are so many splendid pieces of conversations:  The listening, the speaking, expressing one’s own sense of the truth, […]

Love’s Power in Weakness

I’m stuck. I’m really stuck about what to write to you. I’ve had a really hard day and I’m sad and frustrated and feeling like a failure. However, many of you have written to me and told me how much you value the honesty and authenticity in my writing. Well, this is what I have […]

How to Grow a Soul

**from summer  2016** “Life is just a chance to grow a soul.” So said Rev. A. Powell Davies. If our souls can grow, then they aren’t static things or conditions to be simply ignored, lost, or saved. What is the growing piece, then? What is the soul? Hell, what is life? Davies’ quotation seems to […]

Gifts of Practice: Persistence

Stones balanced in a photo of sunset

Here I offer my last in the Gifts of Practice series. This piece is on that ever-elusive virtue, persistence. I Haven’t Been Great at This Here, my friends, is a virtue I have had to learn later in life than I might like. As a kid, many things—academic, literary. musical, social—came easily to me. I […]

Miracles of Prayer, by a Wiccan UU

Many people in my circles—UU, Pagan, humanist, atheist—have little truck with anything called “prayer.” It smacks to them of superstition, sycophancy, futility, or just bad experiences with religion in general and prayer in particular. I’m a huge fan of prayer. So much so, in fact, that my free e-book on this site is called Your […]