Rev. Catharine Is Currently
On Medical Leave

Yemaya Assesu and Spiritual Guests

I have written about spiritual pillaging. And about spiritual tourism. And now I write about spiritual guests. In some traditions I have been a guest; more than just a visitor, but not a full member of the community. My time with the Religious Society of Friends, also called the Quakers, and my time with African […]

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. […]

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 […]

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 […]

Sweet Sweet Water

In my tradition of Wicca, when we call ourselves to look to the Directions that go out to the horizon, call ourselves to mindfulness of the Elements within us, we begin in the East. We begin where Sun rises and Day begins, with the Element of breath and breezes and gales, of Air. We begin […]

The Ethic of Commitment and the Magic Cord

Since I wrote about the omphalos, the navel of the world, in my last entry, something else has occurred to me. It is part of a teaching from the Wicca 101 class I offer, much of which comes from Stone Circle Wicca. The first tool I teach is not the athame, wand, cup, dish or […]