Rev. Catharine Is Currently
On Medical Leave

CB Beal’s Response to the UU World Wildly Missing the Mark

If you’d like to go straight to CB Beal’s response to the UU World’s harmful article about a cisgender woman’s interactions with trans and non-binary people, click here. Today, I will lift up the voice of CB Beal, a non-binary member of the Unitarian Universalist educator and consultant focusing on consent and sexuality ed, and inclusion and […]

Earth-based UU Practice: the VUU

I was so pleased to be asked to speak on the VUU this morning:  the Church of the Larger Fellowship’s panel discussion on various topics of the day. Today was about Earth-based/Pagan practice and its intersections with Unitarian Universalism. We had a great time. Let me know what you think! Click on the link above […]

Where is Faith?

Well, I wrote Reflections about love. I wrote yesterday about hope. I’ve painted myself into a religious corner here, one that I welcome; I need to write about faith. What does faith mean to you? I grew up with the traditional Roman Catholic definition of faith:  Intellectual assent, and belief in things unseen. Particularly intellectual […]

A Day for Saint Francis’ Animals

We have just passed Michaelmas and the Feasts of the Archangels and the Guardian Angel. This leaves today! Today is the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi. Assisi is a small town in Umbria, Italy where the basilicas of Francis, Clare, and Our Lady of the Flowers reside. I had the pleasure of visiting there […]

Initiation: The Greatest Is Love

I’ve spoken this week about initiation on FBLive and I’ve written about it in Reflections. And it has occurred to me that I’ve never written here about the initiation that ultimately led to the birth of The Way of the River. I’ve never written here about the intersection of ordination with what is commonly thought […]

Another Journey with Inanna

The story of the Descent and Return of the Sumerian goddess Inanna is one that is close to my heart. Inanna is sort of the grandmother to Aphrodite of the sea-foam. Inanna’s reincarnations in different cultures came to the Phoenicians, who brought the worship of Aphrodite by sea to Greece. Inanna is the goddess called the […]

The Priestess-Minister: Where Does the River Flow?

I became a priestess. I became a minister. I never relinquished one for the other. And now I’m integrating the wealth of understanding I’ve gained from my preparation and experience of each of these roles into one whole, one identity. To Grow Is Both to Lose and to Gain Part of that integration has involved […]

The Emergence of a Minister: Part 2

So, in case you’re not glued to my every word, I’ll remind you that it was All Souls Unitarian in Washington, DC that really sucked me into Unitarian Universalism, and ultimately into ministry. I had attended another Fellowship in the past, but it had never grabbed me as All Souls did. And it wasn’t the […]

The Emergence of a Minister: Part 1

So now that I’ve written some about the service, healing, ritual, and journeying of a priestess, the question becomes, How and why did I become a Unitarian Universalist minister? The answer is a bit convoluted, as these things go. I had attended a UU congregation in the early-to-mid-nineties, and while I enjoyed the intellectual rigor […]

Who Is This Priestess? Part 3

So after the preceding posts, some questions come to mind, one of which is, What does it mean to be a priestess? Or at least, What does it mean for me? There are several others, but I can’t speak to all of these in one post, but I can speak to the first question, and […]