A few hours north of Sarnia, Ontario, there is a quiet place nestled in a forest. Built with rustic logs, smelling like pine pitch, and surrounded by acres of misty trees, this small building stands, institutional and peaceful; utilitarian and somehow unique. In its natural surroundings, staring at a painting of the Baby Jesus, I found God.

Prayer, for me, has been a way to get through everyday life. I pray for health. I pray to be a better person. I pray for my family, my friends. I pray for things I want, things I don’t deserve, things I’m desperate about, things I can’t deal with. It’s not a fancy prayer. It’s often a mantra, repeated over and over, sometimes under my breath, sometimes out loud, sometimes mouthed in public places, and sometimes earnestly in the dark. And I pray every night, without fail, before I can close my eyes and sleep. I have to touch base. I have to let Him know. I need You. Please help me.

In that church retreat, hidden in the woods, I learned how to pray for more than just myself. I unlocked the talent I had all along – the talent of being able to use my words to change the world for the better. And I never felt closer to God, or more powerful with Him through me than I did then – creating creeds, weaving poetry, sharing with everyone my own personal faith, placing my feet on the path to social justice. If you had asked me then, I would have told you that I didn’t think I would ever be able to part from my relationship with God.

How things change.

I was badly wounded by the Church when I was a teenager. Shy, uncertain, and angry, I was struggling with my own sexuality and my sense of being. Holding hands with God, or so I thought, I faced the people who, also holding hands with God, told me that I didn’t belong. That I would burn in hell. That I was a sinner, a deliberate sinner, one who was so full of pride and bravado and hubris and lies, that I would never be welcome unless I changed who I was at the core. I had grown up solid in my belief that God makes us in His perfect image, and never makes mistakes. Now, I wasn’t sure if I was wrong, or if they were, but my hurt overwhelmed my faith.

I went back at 18, denying who I was. I joined a church of beauty and majesty, of tradition as old as time, and restrictions worse than any other church I’d ever been to. Was it punishment for the supposed sin of who I thought I was? To this day, I can’t answer that. All I know is that everywhere I turned, I found leaders, church members, even the Bible itself, it seemed, telling me that the person I am would never be good enough for God.

So I left. And I tried to forget.

I’m a rational person, most of the time. I also hold grudges, long after I should. And the hurt faded into twinges and then roared back to life in explosive, fiery anger. I wanted to hurt the Church the way it had hurt me. I wanted to hurt God. I wanted to burn in hell the way they said, just so that I could be myself without pretense, so I could live in sin without consequence and guilt.

And inside, I cried out for the God I knew in that quiet forest retreat. I begged Him to help me. I pushed Him away with both hands while simultaneously crying for Him in the night. And to His credit, He hasn’t let me go, though most days, I continue to angrily push and push and push, as hard as I can. He has forgiven me and continues to forgive me, despite all of my anger and moral failings, despite my hurt and my pride. He has quietly proven over and over that He thinks I am good enough for Him.

Knowing this, I suspect that one day, I will heal completely from my scars and from my open, bleeding wounds, the way that even the biggest wounds do heal. The scars will always hurt a little, but they won’t always be open and raw, ready to bleed again at another article about Christians saying “God hates fags”, or someone telling me that you can’t be Christian and gay.

But here’s the thing about healing. When you forgive someone, you don’t do it for them – not really. They benefit from it. They may think that you are doing them a favour. And maybe, part of healing is to acknowledge that you acted wrongly, too, even if at the time, you don’t think you did. Maybe part of it is to be like God, and not push away your fellow human, even if that fellow human has done cutting, horrible things to your psyche and to your sense of self.

The thing about healing is that forgiveness is mostly for you. It’s to reach out with your own humanity and be the bigger person. It doesn’t mean you forget, and it doesn’t mean that you have to draw that person back into your heart. What it does mean is that where the rushing, raging rivers have broken the bridge of faith, forgiveness helps to place new planks, to tie the knots back into the ropes. Where the bridge has rotted in places, forgiveness places brand new materials to make your bridge stronger than ever before. Where the bridge is shaky, forgiveness helps to steady it so that when you walk across it and try to meet God on the other side, it’s not so hard and scary to cross it.

Because when it comes to healing, it might take awhile. It might take a long time to rebuild your bridge. And I’m not saying that someone isn’t going to come along and say cutting things that will throw it into disrepair. I’ve rebuilt my bridge many times now . . . and I’ve begged God to help me find the strength to do it again.

Your bridge isn’t just to God. Your bridge is to your fellow humans, as well. The ones that put up walls to keep others out – your bridge goes to their door and invites them to come and meet you in the middle. The ones that tell you you’re not welcome – your bridge goes to them and tells them that they are welcome to come and belong with you. And the ones that meet you with hatred – your bridge shows them that the easier path is love.

Because maybe the place you’re all trying to reach is that little church retreat in the woods, with the whispering leaves and the distant rush of the many creeks. Maybe the path you all want to walk is the shady wide dirt path with the dappled sunlight through the trees, that wide and welcoming path that has benches to rest on and clear pools to drink from. Maybe the paths we choose are inevitably the harder ones because the stony paths teach you what smooth footing feels like, and we have to learn, in order to grow.

Maybe the pain and the blood are something we all experience, even when we’re the ones wielding the swords that hurt.  And maybe when it comes to healing, you find it in the silence and the dark, the pleas and the desperation, the fact that when you couldn’t walk anymore, He carried you – and carries you still.

Maybe when it comes to healing, it becomes the easier path to take – broken bridge, and all.

My 3-year old is fond of calling me Sister Kate. She's also fond of running through the line-up of our family names.

Just now she said, "Sister Kate, Sister Miriam, Sister Daddy, Sister Mommy!"

I think she's onto an insight about what a title like "Sister" can signify, but I'll wait till she's older to ask about it.

Do you remember when Sister Act came out in the early 1990's? I loved that movie. It was the movie that made me love Whoopi Goldberg. It was amazing to see a film about "my people" told from the perspective of such a quirky religious outsider.

In what ways does donning a religious habit, living the religious life, and taking the title of "Sister" change me? In what ways does my wearing of the habit, living of the life, and using the title of "Sister" change what others think of religious life?

If you've never had the experience of participating in a spiritual discernment committee, I invite you to consider it.

After my fifth (and final) meeting with my discernment committee for priesthood yesterday evening, my committee confirmed that they heard my call to priesthood. And that's not even the extraordinary part.

The extraordinary part is that, as I prayed yesterday before my meeting, I prayed for total surrender to God's will, and for the faithfulness not to run if that will was something my ego didn't like. My total surrender granted me total, deep, quieting peace.

The extraordinary part is that, having let go of my attachment to the outcome of my discernment process, I happened to read (during evening prayer) the story in Matthew about the disciples who wanted to know why they couldn't heal the sick on their own when Jesus so easily could. Jesus told them it was because they lacked faith, and that if they had faith even the size of a mustard seed, mountains would move for them. And I realized at that moment that my mustard seed faith was what had moved the mountain of my ego in order to make a straight path for Spirit to enter and dwell deep within my heart.

The extraordinary part is that, despite having a clear sense of call when I walked into the process, my sense of call widened and deepened and became more rooted as the dialogue went on.

The extraordinary part is that, especially in the final two meetings, as I listened to the challenging questions of my committee members, I perceived Spirit doing the asking. And as I offered my vulnerable, open-hearted answers, I perceived Spirit speaking through me. (It's fair to say that I've never experienced God's voice speaking to me so powerfully as I have in my discernment committee meetings, and for a Benedictine who hears God speaking to her through liturgy and scripture and encounters with others all the time, that's saying a lot.)

The extraordinary part is that, despite my Enneagram-three-personality-type's desire to manage a situation in such a way that the outcome is "positive," I was required to relinquish my ability to do that in order to speak plainly and truthfully. I was painfully aware that my deep honesty could at any moment result in the humiliation of my ego, and I spoke anyway. In that total risk of my ego, I realized it was not my ego that spoke, but Spirit.

When I walked out of my meeting last night, I had no idea what my committee members had heard. I didn't know what they would say. My three-ish ability to anticipate the outcome of the process failed me spectacularly. And I perceived in my failure the possibility of God's success--success in finding a way to make use of the quirky instrument that I am.

My committee is passing me on to the next steps of the discernment process, steps that will be challenging in their own ways. What my committee heard may not be confirmed by the next folks I encounter in the discernment process. But what happens next is not my concern.

The most important piece to emerge for me from this discernment process is the profound recognition that my heart--my whole heart--belongs to the one I call God. Whatever comes, I know that I will be faithful to the path God has prepared for me. I won't turn away. This is God's gig, and I am God's beautiful, imperfect instrument.

What song(s) will God choose to play through me for the uplifting, healing, and reconciling of her creation?

My fourth priestly discernment meeting, which happened yesterday morning in between Pentecost liturgies, gives me goosebumps as I reflect on it. I realize that the questions I received were the questions of Spirit herself, that God was speaking through the voices of my five committee members (right there in Heidi Chapel) and I was being beckoned to answer God's questions from the depths of my vulnerable heart.

The whole of the Pentecost season (which, thanks to the influence of Latin in the Roman Church, we call "Ordinary Time") is a time of just this kind of discernment, of radical listening. My Pentecost theme for Thealogical Lady will be "Spirit Whispers," and here I will invite myself and my readers to cultivate the ability to hear what Spirit says. To listen, ob audire, is to be obedient. Obedience is one of the vows that I have made as a Benedictine Canon, and obedience--radical listening--is something to which all Christians are called by baptism. Listening is a path of wisdom for any mindful person, that she might hear something greater and wiser than her own solitary voice.

In reflecting on the Spirit-ed questions that emerged during my discernment meeting yesterday, clarity about my identity rose up. I am not merely Kate, responding to a diocesan priestly call; I am Sr. Kate, a vowed member of the Community of St. Mary of the Annunciation, responding to a religious priestly call. I wonder what further clarity will emerge from my next discernment meeting. In what ways will Spirit speak through the curiosity and concerns of my committee members? What will I hear, if I have ears to listen?

The psalms appointed for morning prayer in The Book of Common Prayer today included Psalm 44, and I couldn't help but think of the girls kidnapped in Nigeria with these words on their lips:

We have heard with our ears, O God,
   our ancestors have told us,
what deeds you performed in their days,
   in the days of old:
you with your own hand drove out the nations,
   but them you planted;
you afflicted the peoples,
   but them you set free;
for not by their own sword did they win the land,
   nor did their own arm give them victory;
but your right hand, and your arm,
   and the light of your countenance,
   for you delighted in them.

You are my King and my God;
   you command victories for Jacob.
Through you we push down our foes;
   through your name we tread down our assailants.
For not in my bow do I trust,
   nor can my sword save me.
But you have saved us from our foes,
   and have put to confusion those who hate us.
In God we have boasted continually,
   and we will give thanks to your name for ever.

Yet you have rejected us and abased us,
   and have not gone out with our armies.
You made us turn back from the foe,
   and our enemies have taken spoil for themselves.
You have made us like sheep for slaughter,
   and have scattered us among the nations.
You have sold your people for a trifle,
   demanding no high price for them.

You have made us the taunt of our neighbors,
   the derision and scorn of those around us.
You have made us a byword among the nations,
   a laughing-stock among the peoples.
All day long my disgrace is before me,
   and shame has covered my face
at the words of the taunters and revilers,
   at the sight of the enemy and the avenger.

All this has come upon us,
   yet we have not forgotten you,
   or been false to your covenant.
Our heart has not turned back,
   nor have our steps departed from your way,
yet you have broken us in the haunt of jackals,
   and covered us with deep darkness.

If we had forgotten the name of our God,
   or spread out our hands to a strange god,
would not God discover this?
   For he knows the secrets of the heart.
Because of you we are being killed all day long,
   and accounted as sheep for the slaughter.

And as the final words of this psalm come around, I can't help but think that the hands and feet and deeds they seek from God are the ones given by God to me--and you.

Rouse yourself! Why do you sleep, O Lord?
   Awake, do not cast us off for ever!
Why do you hide your face?
   Why do you forget our affliction and oppression?
For we sink down to the dust;
   our bodies cling to the ground.
Rise up, come to our help.
   Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love.

How will I use my God-given hands and feet--how will I use my freedom to act--for the liberation of those who are, at this very moment, horrifically oppressed?

Here's a statement about the Nigerian girls from Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori given on behalf of the Episcopal Church, and here's a link to the call for submissions for the anthology that will be published in honor of the girls (whose proceeds will go to notforsalecampaign.org)

When my friend Noach was helping bring this site into being, he asked me about folks he could contact to recommend me to others.

One of the three who responded was my classmate from St. John's School of Theology (Collegeville, Minnesota), Rev. Cody Unterseher.

When I wrote my post about leadership yesterday, I had forgotten about the recommendations tucked away on this site.  I found the following from a person who was even more dedicated to the study of liturgy than I was, and who even knew about my church in Cleveland as soon as I mentioned it to him while at table in the St. John's refectory in August 2005.

Cody and I were both laypeople when we were at St. John's, and somehow we ended up in a stance of wary opposition to one another for most of those two years.  Although I sang at his ordination to the diaconate in late March of 2007, we didn't really become friends until we had each been accepted into (separate) doctoral programs in liturgical studies.  He was an ordained priest in the Episcopal Church by then, and his focus in all things was reconciliation in Christ.

He wrote this about me when solicited for the testimonials on this site:

I had the privilege of working side-by-side with Kate during our overlapping years at Saint John's School of Theology•Seminary in Collegeville, Minnesota (2005-2007).  During that time, each of us served a one-year tenure as Chair of the School's Student Liturgy Committee. In her time as Chair, Kate showed herself to be a competent, confident and collegial leader. Her ability to coordinate the Committee's efforts were exceeded only by her gift for enabling and equipping others to do the work with which they were engaged, in a non-anxious, non-domineering and non-threatened way. Everything needful was well done, without haste, without micromanagement, in a respectful atmosphere of mutual listening and creative consensus-building. The ability to lead in such a way is a real gift as well as a skill, and Kate has cultivated it as a faithful steward. In terms of practical ability, Michelle Kate is a most competent liturgist. She combines a commanding knowledge of liturgical history and liturgical theology, together with a refined sense of liturgical law and its application, and brings these to bear on her work in preparing for liturgical celebration. At the same time, and more importantly, Michelle Kate has a refined pastoral sense. She is able to listen to a community, supporting its members as they give voice to their vision and aspirations, and helping them to identify and prioritize needs and goals for practical achievement. In preparing for liturgical celebration, Kate has a strong sense of liturgical gestalt, and is able to harmonize musical selection, crafted and received texts, and worship space environment in a way that is at once humble and elegant.  

As I said, it was a privilege to work with Kate; I would not hesitate to work with her again in the future, nor to recommend her wholeheartedly to others.

His kindness in remembering our two years together overwhelmed me.  That was late in 2011.  When he died suddenly from complications related to a brain aneurysm in April 2012, my world collapsed around me.  I wept for months. I still weep for him.

I'm not into guardian angels, but I often have Cody (whom I fondly refer to as Codex) close to heart when I consider my future as a the( )logian and minister.  In fact, I just found out that he was ordained to the priesthood on the Feast of the Archangels (also known as the Feast of St. Michael, or Michaelmas).  He is indeed my own Holy Messenger (άγγελος), accompanying me from his place at the Holy Banquet.  He and I were more alike than I ever imagined when we were in school together.  That fact alone leads me to believe that I could indeed become a remarkable servant leader--just like the one he became.