Rev. Catharine Is Currently
On Medical Leave

The Work of Lammas

Beloved, beloved, beloved, thrice beloved! If this is your first time getting or reading Reflections, either in your inbox or on The Way of the River site, be welcome. I also invite you (if you do Facebook) to investigate our Facebook Group for  The Way of the River. Be welcome there, and if you are […]

Pillage of Spirit and Culture

As you know if you read my last blog post, I was on the Bespoken Bones podcast #20. One of the things we talked about in that interview was how discussions of cultural appropriation can be very binary, and that that binary is not always a helpful way to go about having conversation. Let me […]

Ireland’s Matron Saint–You’re Invited

Hello, and long time no see! I have missed you here at The Way of the River blog. Before I begin here, let me say that if you enjoy reading my writing or following my work, there are (at least) two other ways you can connect with my writing and so keep up with what […]

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 […]

Shifting Stones of Fat and Love

This is a story of a young woman in her twenties, knowing she was powerful, glorious, radiant, sick and suicidal. She was fat, the fattest among her ceremonial colleagues. But she was powerful, physically and otherwise, and she knew it. And this is a story of a femme woman in her forties, no longer physically […]

Lammas is Coming, the Grain is Getting Fat

Monday evening, at 4 pm Pacific, 5 pm Mountain, etc. I shall be coordinating a discussion in preparation for Lammas, the contemporary and ancient Earth-centered grain holiday. As I’ve prepared for our discussion, some words and their etymologies have come to mind, and some pieces of stories about my experience of Lammas over the years. […]

Home Sweet Altars, Part 1

My nurse practitioner—who, in case I haven’t mentioned it, is the BEST EVER—asked me this past week if I was finally really landing in Portland. And I realized, yes, yes, it’s happening. The last years of physical and mental health problems have come to a crisis that is FORCING me in a slow-motion arm-wrestling match, to stop, drop, […]

Holy Week, Holy Days, Holy Memories

For those of you who subscribe to and read Reflections, I said I’d continue my thoughts on Holy Week here. Even if you didn’t get Reflections, I encourage you to read; I am contemplating my relationship with Holy Week, and particularly the deepest, most complex and holy liturgy of the year in the Roman tradition, […]

No Glitter in My Ashes, Part I

“You’re the most Catholic UU I’ve ever met,” now-Reverend Madelyn Campbell said to me across the aisle in the seminary lecture hall. And in many ways, she was right, and she’s still right. My wife says I’m Episcopalian in the winter (awesome Advent!), Catholic in the spring (tune-up of Lent), more aggressively Pagan in the […]

Guilty Pleasures, Love, and Ritual

So I was talking with my wife about guilty pleasures—I’ve been reading 19th-century period romance novels—and she immediately responded, “I don’t feel guilty about my pleasures.” This is a woman who loves all kinds of books:  Memoir, natural history nonfiction, novels from various eras. She also loves movies, many, though not all, of them of […]