Author Archives: Kathleen

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About Kathleen

Spiritual Companion since 2016: A spiritual companion simply converses with one person or small group at a time to explore their connections with the universe or higher power of their understanding. Support, companionship, and mutual growth are keys to successful spiritual direction, along with a safe space for exploration. For 25 years I served several congregations as Pastor or as Consultant to pastors and/or congregations.
Sep14

“Blogging is so 20th century!”

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Thus exclaimed a young colleague in a meeting of clergy. What? Am I yet again an old fuddy duddy luddite, always behind the latest trends?

Well, probably so. I was way behind in entering the blogosphere, and now I’m told it’s so yesterday.

She doesn’t want to read a long explanation of anything–just some tweet-length calls to action!

I can appreciate that. Some of us spend way too much time thinking or meeting or planning instead of actually doing something.

Sure enough, in early 2010: Blogging is Out

But that’s probably outdated, too. A Twitter feed really is a good way to keep up with a fast moving story. You get a general impression, but not necessarily up to journalistic standards.

Don’t we need it all? Tweet, post, blog, essay, article, in-depth reporting, systematic thinking, doctoral studies . . . and daily activities, social interaction, conversations, encounters, service, action, experience . . . It all works together to save us from ourselves.

Alone, we are one. Together, the connections continue to mulitply. Then alone again, we are changed.

What do you think?

Aug13

Requiems

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I am getting excited about singing two Requiems on Saturday the 20th! Mozart’s Requiem is a delightful challenge–lots of 16th notes and dynamics from very soft to full voice.

Mozart actually did not finish his Requiem. We were even told the last note he wrote before his died, a high A for the sopranos! His colleague Franz Xaver Süssmayr completed the score, which had been commissioned by Count Franz von Walsegg to commemorate the anniversary of his wife’s death. It premiered on Feb. 14, 1792.

A project is under way to take the portions of the Requiem that Mozart completed and to have contemporary composers write their own orchestration for each movement. So we will also perform the world premiere of “Lacrymosa” as arranged by Austin composer Peter Stopschinski. The words will be in English, but the choral notes will be as Mozart wrote them.

Gabriel Fauré wrote his Requiem between 1887 and 1890 in memory of his own parents. It is also a favorite of mine: I would like to have the famous soprano solo “Pie Jesu” sung at my memorial service.

The occasion for all this is the 2011 Summer Symposium of the Texas Choral Consort, plus orchestra, directed by Brent Baldwin. He is also Music Director for First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin. For the Symposium, the chorus of 104 voices (SATB) has met for three rehearsals per week since July 23. It’s a month-long intensive with a glorious concert at the end!

It has been very helpful to me that many of the singers were already familiar with the work–made it much easier to learn. So, with one week to go, rehearsals will begin to add portions of the orchestra, starting with strings. This has been a great and challenging experience.

Bonus treat: “Out of the Silence” for orchestra and piano by William Grant Still.

As indicated in the flyer below, the concert will be Saturday, August 20, at 8PM, at Northwest Hills United Methodist Church, 7050 Village Center Drive, 78731 (just south of Far West Blvd). Tickets are $20, $15 for Seniors and Students, and free for the under-10 crowd. Or if you ask nicely, I’ll give you one!

Summer_2011_Flyer

Aug5

a meditative moment

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A new (to me) meditation CD helped me relax so nicely. Psychologist Paul Overman has a series of 10 Minutes to Relax CDs. Guided meditation for about 10 minutes and another 10 minutes of relaxing music (Jim Oliver on synthesizer). It’s a great reminder that meditation does not need to take much time. It just needs the space–your personal space–that will bring you back to your center. Doesn’t that feel so good when you let it happen?

So for just one minute, breathe with me.

Let your rib cage expand, . . .

let your breath come smoothly and easily. . . .

Let tension flow all the way through and out of your body. . . .

Let wellbeing flow into you, . . .

from toes and fingers . . .

all the way through to your head. . . .

Then take this moment with you into your day. . . .

Be well.

Aug2

Back seat drivers wanted!

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So Congress has an “agreement.” Is anyone surprised that it took until an artificially generated deadline for the most stubborn of politicians to sign a document that pleases no one? (Excuse me. The millionaires and billionaires and big corporations must be pleased.) Millions of low income Americans pay no income tax either, but they stand to lose a great deal when cuts are made over the next decade.

All of this is artificial, none of this is relevant to the economy; no other nation has a debt ceiling except Denmark and it isn’t strict like the one we have. More relevant are jobs and cutting the safety net. We always seem to be chasing after false issues. Who discussed the starvation in Somalia while this went on? Education, jobs, anyone? How many of you are confident that Congress and the Obama Administration will have great success in funding schools and generating jobs?

I think we would rather point fingers than lift them to help others–at least officially. It has fallen to non-profits and the goodness of strangers to provide a safety net that is full of holes for lack of funding.

“Banks and corporations are exhibiting a confidence reminiscent of pre-crisis days, even as the broader economy still sputters. Bank profits soared in the first three months of the year, and corporate profits likewise swelled last year. And executives saw ever fatter bonuses. But the amount of cash banks sent out into the economy as loans declined last quarter, and the pace at which companies are hiring new workers remains disappointing with the unemployment rate stuck around 9 percent.” (William Alden at the Huffington Post)

Even so, banks are shedding jobs, mostly contractors or employees involved with mortgage loans. Less money is available for mortgage loans even though banks own so many foreclosed properties they have trouble keeping the properties maintained.

The wrong people seem to make the big decisions! Speak your mind: call, write, email, network, or tweet. Don’t just stay in the back seat while someone else drives you over a cliff. It’s high time to become a back seat driver!

Jul24

Heat, Dry Bones, Dust, and Wind

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Days and weeks of drought affect so many residents of this country, trapped under a heat dome held firmly in place. Sunlight and drought are too much with us. Soothing, refreshing rain is too distant a memory. We are grateful, most of us, that we live in homes with fans and air conditioning. We drive in cool cars on our way to another cool place. Meanwhile, construction and farming, soldiering, policing, firefighting, and emergency work go on as best they can. Ranchers struggle to draw water from deep wells or dig trenches to irrigate. This is merely a taste, a test of solidarity with desert dwellers.

Rain (and drought) fall on the just and the unjust alike. God, is it in your power to send rain to the thirsty, to dry up flooded lands and homes, to extinguish raging wildfires, to keep all living things safe from harm?

No, it is not. It is for all of us to help one another cope. We can’t fix the weather though we can be smart about energy and water use. Some say to pray for rain. I say, pray for life in hard times and good.

Yet now we know about Somalia, where so many are dying of thirst, hunger, and warfare. Thousands have walked for 10 days or more to relatively safe camps in Kenya. Many have been attacked on the way and everything they carried was taken away by thieves. Many have died on the way, especially children. There is no time to grieve; only time to save the living. Dust to dust, bones to dry bones, wind where there is nothing to tame it.

We struggle with problems of our own—keeping ourselves cool and nourished, watching billionaires fight for every dime they can control, indulging our children with possessions, desperately trying to find and keep jobs, cutting budgets at home, and in all levels of  government, into the very marrow, averting our eyes.

Slowly we ourselves become the dry bones, the dust, then nothing but the wind.

Let us instead become the rain.

. . . And there’s more:

A terror attack in downtown Oslo and a related shooting at a youth camp there has taken at least 92 lives. Massive damage to buildings around downtown by the car/truck bomb and a horrific shooting at an annual political camp for young adults has shattered Norway’s peaceful existence. We are saddened, angered, and discouraged about the state of the world and the latest unfolding tragedies.

All these we hold in our hearts with compassion, blessings, and healing prayers.

Amen

Jul17

Some things ventured . . .

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In my July 10 sermon “Nothing Ventured . . .” I invited the congregation to write down one thing they would do toward fulfilling a long-held dream. I mentioned that intentions could be to do less, to heal yourself, to set on a new path, or any of an infinite array of possibilities. When I read them aloud a collective excitement built among the congregants. Here they are in random order:

  • Look at the stars at a very dark site here in TX
  • Relax, stop sweating the small stuff
  • Take more risks
  • Be more reflective
  • Nothing ventured, nothing gained–Shuttle Atlantis
  • Ministry in THIS CHURCH
  • Adopt child
  • Hike the Appalachian Trail
  • Finish the children’s book I’ve started
  • I want to start training for running a 5K race in November
  • Buy a Harley and ride it across the USA
  • Get ready for our 3 Denver grandchildren and ex-daughter-in-law who are coming soon
  • Retire and return to a life of the mind
  • Take a trip
  • Work in my shop in cool weather
  • Become more independent
  • Write poetry
  • Stop trying to control others
  • Retire, start new career growing butterflies
  • Travel and make new friends
  • Swim with dolphins = plan vacation!
  • Tell Kayla that I love her
  • Love myself fiercely
  • Backpack around the world
  • Publish more writing
  • More nothing but plenty of everything
  • Volunteer
  • Swim in spring water
  • Meditate every day
  • Figure out how to free myself from the slavery of possessions
  • I want to teach people to knit and crochet wherever I am

What do you need or long to do?
Would you do it if someone offered you $1,000?
Would you do it for yourself, for nothing?

Jul5

“When I hear music” –Libby Roderick

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How is the musical side of your brain working? Austin is so full of music it’s pretty easy to find music of any style. Recently I enjoyed hearing The Harmony Brothers (Max, Al, and Mark) at Artz Rib House. Good food, good music, one tip jar, and a set during the break by Austin Kessler. Nice!

I know those musicians in part through The Bakery Jam, founded in 2005 at Texas French Bread on S. Congress. (We were so sad when that TFB location closed!) We’ve been “spreading the music” for six years now in member homes week after week. Since there were plenty of guitars, I decided to dust off my flute. Depending on who shows up, we also have many vocalists, percussion, bass, violin, mandolin, harmonica, keyboard, melodica, and even an occasional trumpet (muted) or banjo (run for your lives!). Our motto is just right for a group of amateurs: “We’re all good at something else.”Among the harmonies have been romances that blossomed into permanency  and the benefits of professional musicians among us.

I grew up in a family of musicians–mostly piano, organ, and voice. My sister taught me to sing 3-part rounds when I was 3 years old. She and our middle sister needed a third voice for “White Coral Bells” (“White coral bells upon a slender stalk / Lilies of the Valley deck my garden walk. / Oh, don’t you wish that you could hear them ring? / That will happen only when the fairies sing.”) and “Johnny” (“Here we come singing / and here we come calling / for Johnny, Johnny. / Well! Well!)

How time flew while we washed, dried, and put away dishes after supper! Both my grandfather and my eldest sister were church organists for years. Mama could have been a concert pianist but she gave that up when she married and started a family. I started in “training choir” in 2nd grade at our Episcopal Church, moved through all of its choirs for 10 years, into college choirs, and now Tapestry Singers, the Austin women’s chorus since 2003. (No auditions necessary! All women who love to sing are welcome, and our director is terrific.)

New venture this summer: The Summer Symposium of the Texas Choral Consort, directed by Brent Baldwin. After an intense month of rehearsals 3x/week, we’ll sing in concert Aug. 20. Rehearsals begin July 23, so there’s still time for men and women to sign up to sing! From their website:

“In August, TCC will present two of the greatest titans of the classical canon: the Requiems of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Gabriel Fauré. The program will also feature the world-premiere of a Requiem-based work by Austin luminary Peter Stopschinski, and “Out of the Silence” for orchestra and piano by William Grant Still.”

Saturday August 20, 2011 at 8:00 p.m.
Northwest Hills United Methodist Church
7050 Village Center Drive, Austin TX

Purchase tickets

 

Such fun to get out of my logical brain and into my musical brain! Where do you go to feed your artist within?

Jun27

On the plus side of ministry

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Before General Assembly got underway, clergy and other religious professionals arrived a day or two early for our own meetings. I scarcely had time to check messages among workshops, worship, conversations, and occasional meals. Time with colleagues is so precious to me!

One highlight from Ministry Days:

The annual “25/50 year service” honors ministers who were ordained 25 and 50 years ago in a very meaningful worship service. Each “class” selects one of their own to deliver a short sermon that usually looks back over the decades and into the future challenges of ministry. This year Lindi Ramsden and Richard Gilbert were so honored.

Lindi Ramsden helped her San Jose congregation grow from 30 to 300 members over a 17 year span. Among other accomplishments, she started a Spanish-language service and the UU Legislative Ministry in California (UULM). She has now left the parish and works full time as Executive Director of UULM.

Dick Gilbert served several churches, with his longest tenure in Rochester, NY. Always a prophetic minister and a renowned preacher, he wrote Building Your Own Theology, including a series on Ethics, and How Much Do We Deserve?  These are both wonderful curricula designed to generate conversation among us so that we come away with a stronger sense of our own beliefs. He also wrote a meditation manual, In the Holy Quiet of This Hour.

It is such a joy to recognize and celebrate successful ministry over decades of faithful service. During the Service of Living Tradition, another beloved tradition, we celebrate ministers who have achieved Preliminary Fellowship, Final Fellowship, retirement from full-time ministry, and those who have died in the past year. Thus our names are called into sacred space four times, if we are so fortunate. Each year we scan the lists and note the names of our beloved friends and colleagues. Bless them all!