Perhaps I’d like to be a vampire
unable to see my own reflection.
Sipping plasma from a teacup
forgetting my unseen face and feeling
how my body feels never again knowing how
it looks from the back or from the side.
I think I could enjoy the twin gifts
of immortality and liberation
from the burden of my own judgmental gaze.

I might like to be a witch.
Not a Portland witch
with good instagram and crystals in her bra,
but a Macbeth witch, me and my sisters
spinning the future with cryptic words, and then
drifting off into the mist.
Kings would destroy each other and go mad
while we giggle and eat cookies on our weird couch.

I don’t think I want to be a zombie.
Forcing myself to get up and go
when my flesh already feels sluggish and
heavy, surviving off the minds
of others, sitting slackjawed and
empty starving for fresh thoughts.
I’m kinda trying not to do that these days.

I might enjoy being a ghost,
thin and insubstantial as worry. I could haunt
the places that mean the most to me.
I would let the heroes wonder what
My unfinished business is.
(If only they knew) all my business is unfinished.
But I am already tired of trying
and trying and trying to be believed in.

I think I will be a werewolf,
running in a pack with you.
And when the moon shines upon us
feral growls will rumble in the back of our thick throats, and
our snarling teeth will gleam.
It will be nice, I think to no longer hide
our bone splintering
transformations while
our howls echo for miles

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Spiritual Direction

Start here, I would say,
read the prologue of my right shoulder,
just by the neck, it is tense and painful but
dont skip it to get to the good parts, I
promise all the parts are important, even when they
ache, and I won’t make sense without the pain.

Read all the way down arms that have held
lovers and children These arms are sometimes
strong enough to hold it all together. But not
always, and then read my weak wrists and strong hands.

You might think my heart is the plot, driving all the action, but
the theme might surprise you
as the action falls and rises and falls again.
I know I can be a real page
turner. But, take your time with the
rising action of my spine, and
don’t worry if you mispronounce the center of me,
most people do at first.

My hips will roll out the denouement and after we
rest I want to read you too.
And maybe,
hopefully,
there will be a sequel.

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Spiritual Direction

We went to the pumpkin patch. We carved the pumpkins, and
one has already collapsed in on itself.
The other can still light up the night.

My sweet little miracle will go get candy
at every door, purple butterfly wings
lighting up the night.

I am planning the soft beige salty feast.
And then we will bring the tree home and string it bright,
and it too can light up the night.

I might, might get four candles for the table.
Three purple, one pink (princess colors for the darkest days).
And I might, might use them
to light up the night.

And here, in what has been the dark time of my own tender soul,
And the world too, long, then longer dark then darker
I find myself asking:

What glitter, what candle, what LED string,
what prayer, what miracle, what love can we use
to light up this night?

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Spiritual Direction

I love to paint, I always have. My earliest memory is just the color yellow and the way it made me feel. I love words (obviously, I use way too many of them most of the time), but through my life art keeps coming back. When I was in my late 20’s I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life I looked at both M.Div (Masters of Divinity) and MFA (Masters of Fine Art) programs. I’m not sorry I chose the theology path back then, and I have no plans to go to proper art school now, but I am ready to make a go of this whole art thing.

My intentions for this fall with the little kid in preschool are to go all in with my writing, and spiritual direction and my art. I am working on a novel with more consistant progress than I ever had before. I am hopefully adding two new directees this month. I am painting and drawing every week, and even taking a few art classes.

It has been probably fifteen years since I have had an art show. That’s a decade and a half since I took paintings out of my house and let strangers see them. Not that you, my loves and my dear ones, are strangers, but you know what I mean. And so in the spirt of bravery I made a shop, a little online gallery: kerlin.bigcartel.com. And so this feelis like my opening. Please picture me standing here in a clean shirt making small talk and seeming like I have it all together. There is no boxed wine or costco cheese, but if thats what you need, just let me know.

The pieces I’m showing right now are some of my smaller ones, because I’ve been scanning them on a flatbed scanner. I still need to figure out how to get decent photos of my larger paintings.1 But I’m trying not to let everything I can’t yet do get in the way of what I can do.

There is a part of me that feels like a little kid bringing you my drawings and watching your face to see what you think. Except of course I can’t see your face, which is a shame, because I probably really like your face. And there is another part of me that feels like an impostor and a braggart, you too might be familar with the voice that asks you who exactly you think you are. But there is another part of me that is brave (and winning and writing this post).

So anyway, here is some of my art. I hope you like it. There will be more to come. I will figure out how to get non-shitty photos of the big ones eventually. I will keep painting and writing every week. I will keep trying to be brave.

Thank you.

I don’t know about you, my loves and my dear ones, but I don’t always make the absolute best choices from this place. But this morning I somehow had the presence of mind to call a dear friend after dropping the little kid off at preschool. We were late and I had not written a good enough little note for you. So I was driving to a coffee shop to write this, before going to go paint.

On my drive to the coffee shop we talked though all the things. He sees me and knows me and can remind me of who I am, who I want to be, and all the hard things I am learning.

By the time I got to the coffee shop I had gotten here:

And so my loves and my dear ones,
My little prayer for you today
is the same as my little prayer for myself
(it’s okay, we can share)
May your anxious panic
take a breath
take a pause
make a call to someone who will follow
all your batshit crazy metaphors.
May you find peace
may you let go of the stories
(you know the ones.)
May you feel the breeze on you skin
and the freedom of joy.
You are precious,
you are worthy of love
you are beloved.

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Spiritual Direction

Let me say clearly, I am not now, and never have been, Jewish. All of my understanding comes from friends and things I have read. I’m not sure I’m even Christian right now, but I still want to be careful of the particularly yucky practice of stuffing Christian meaning down the throat of Jewish practices.

My understanding of Sukkot is that, following Yom Kippur, one builds a temporary shelter and lives in it for about a week. It is a harvest festival and gives a nod to the nomadic time of wandering in the desert.

There’s a story about Jesus we call “the Transfiguration.” He goes up a mountain with his friends and is lit up with the blinding light of Love, standing there in the presence of wisdom and tradition (Moses and Elijah). And his friend Peter says, hey guys, let’s build three dwellings! Everybody picks on Peter for this. The usual accusation is that he’s trying to make something permanent, that he wants to freeze the moment and never leave the mountain. I think maybe Peter was a Jewish boy who was thinking more sukkot than temple. I think Peter had just seen the glory of God, and he was asking, can we party for a minute? Maybe he was saying this is the harvest we’ve been waiting for, the fullness, the fruition, seeing the love of God brilliantly reflected in my own rabbi. Maybe he was saying this moment is glorious and I want to rest in it just for now.

When the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, that word for comes from the same root as Peter’s tents. The Word pitched a tent. A little tabernacle. A temporary spot. Just like every single human body that has ever been born on this earth. Our bodies are tents, not cathedrals. Maybe we can learn to live in them in joy and wonder and rest.

In this particular season of my life, so many things are shifting. I am asking myself (and now you): how do we live in these harvest moments? How do we sit and celebrate when we know that winter is coming and this might be all we get? How do we let experiences become rich and full without bitterness as we anticipate losing them?

Loss is life and life is loss, and I know this. I know this, my loves and my dear ones, and still, it is so fucking hard. It is so hard for me to sit and appreciate the beauty in this moment without grieving the beautiful moments that are already gone, without clutching this moment to my chest.

Because I know it won’t last, I want to savor it. I want to practice loosening my grip. I want to practice building things that are meant to crumble. Some things cannot last, which as far as I can tell is everything.

I don’t want to need to make it permanent.
I want to learn to sit in this particular unrepeatable moment.
I want to learn the gifts of impermanence.

And so my loves and my dear ones,
Let’s build tents of enough and stake this day in the right now
Let’s build beauty that just might come tumbling down
I want to party for a minute.
We will definitely need snacks.
And I know we need friends.
Because I want to stay here with you, among the fall flowers, and
not just miss the summer,
not just worry about the coming winter.
I want to dwell in this fragile body
in this fragile moment
with you

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Spiritual Direction

It was a nearly perfect lake day. I got enough sunscreen on me and the little kid, so that neither one of us burned. It was wonderful to catch up with our friends whose little dude is 3 months older than mine. The beach wasn’t empty by a long shot, but it wasn’t crowded either. There were some other bigger kids playing and some grown-ups bobbing in the water. I wasn’t paying much attention to any of them. We went out on the paddleboards, played in the sand, and soaked up what could be the last sunny weekend day.

We were getting close to getting ready to start packing up and my friend took the paddle board out one last time with both little kids on it. Her partner and I were starting to tidy up, and then, both kids were standing in the shallow water and she was making speed across the lake. “Oh good” I said to her partner “she’s getting a little bit of solo time on her board.” She wasn’t. She was rushing across the water to a woman who had gone too far out. My friend got her out of the deep water and back to shore.

A micro-community formed, the way it does in a crisis. There was the woman who called 911, the woman who sat with the nearly drowned woman as she refused to let the firefighter EMT’s near her while she was still coughing up lake water. My friend, the rescuer, was beyond shaken. The flash of cortisol and adrenaline that allowed her to save a life, left her body trembling.

The woman had been drinking. It seemed like a lot. She couldn’t swim, and she wasn’t wearing a life jacket, even though there were racks of free loaner ones on the shore. We got filled in on a little bit of the drama by the other helpers. There was a man who had come and gone with lots of shouting and phone calls. There was a little girl, her daughter. There was more. And more than that I’m sure.

I am still worried about this woman. I am very worried about her daughter. But mostly today my prayers are of gratitude, and awe. I am grateful for helpers, and communities, however small and brief. I am grateful for my friend’s attention and reflexes. I am grateful for her capacity. I am grateful for my own life. I am grateful to be sitting here this morning writing to you. The fall equinox is tomorrow, so it really is the last day of summer. I am grateful for this summer. I am grateful to you. Thank you all so much for being a tender community I can share with.

I don’t really have a good tidy conclusion to offer you my loves and my dear ones. I just wanted to share with you that yesterday, I saw a miracle. I saw my friend save a life. I saw a beach full of strangers turn into a village and then disperse again. I saw sunlight sparkle on the water.

Amen

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Spiritual Direction Inquiry

Has someone made a word yet for the feeling you have when an old friend and an ex-lover that you haven’t talked to in years dies and you find out days after the fact on Facebook?

And is there a word for the way that the clouds look on a day that they will never see? And maybe because they were only 3 months younger than you, you want to scream nobody that young should just die? Even though you’ve already had plenty of friends younger than this die. And is there a word for the color of sunlight that your ex-lover who now is dead will never see?

Is there a word for the way you hold the fact of their death in the palm of your hand right now, but you know that in just a minute you will string their death onto the rosary of loss you keep in your back pocket, your fingers caressing and counting each little grief. You roll the way you still can’t cross the Saint John’s Bridge, the way you haven’t taken your grandmother’s number out of your favorites on your contact list, and cannot use a green pen between your thumb and finger. And the string will grow with every loss, and know it will not keep you from loving.

They were not always good and not always kind and they were deeply wounded and they broke you and even though they offered to put you together again they never did. And is there a word for that?

Is there a word for feeling like you don’t have the right to be sad? And you remember how they never really could listen to you. And you know you were often an amalgamation of their own projections. And you loved them anyway. And is there a word for being simultaneously filled with regret while savoring this moment of being yourself, entirely alive?

And you know you will forget again by tomorrow afternoon how precious and fleeting and fragile and rare it is to be among the living.

And maybe there is a word for the tears you cannot cry even if you wanted to. But still it is a particular sadness, this flavor of grief, and so you savor it even as the little kid learns to ride his pedal bike by the waterfront, and you can still breathe air that is already as cold as fall.

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The little kid started preschool this week and so I declared it to be my first week of "work." There are so many things I want to do. All kinds of projects I'm working on. I'm trying to get my art photographed and up on a website, even though the art studio isn't all put together yet either, projects inside a projects. I'm trying to make real progress on a novel I’ve been working on for years, or give up and just start on a new one. I'm putting together my schedule for Spiritual Direction for this fall. I'm also getting ready to begin consulting with a sweet church here in Portland that actually wants to be welcoming to polyamorous folks.

There are a lot of things and it's kind of all over the place. Which is not that unusual for me. But I'm worried about how it all comes together, you know? Like there's all these things I want to be doing, but how do they fit? I have lists and pages of ideas, but how do I keep myself accountable when days are full of friends and fun plans and last-minute distractions? Attention isnt always my biggest surplus if you know what I mean.

I once read a piece of productivity advice that suggested sending your boss an email every Friday with your accomplishments from the week. Part of what it promised was the idea that you could see how much progress you'd made, instead of only looking at what wasn't done yet. It sounded like a good idea but I don't have a boss. So this week I decided that I work for the glorious Dolly Parton.

I figure Dolly has more time on her hands now, not being burdened with a body on Earth anymore. And who better to follow if you want to spread love, compassion, and beauty in this world? I want to be a non-toxic person of faith and so I now work for Dolly Parton. She won't get angry at me for work that isn't done yet, but she will hold me accountable and I will do my best for her. She knows the work needs to get done and I woudl never wnat to dissapoint Dolly.

This week did not feel like I accomplished as much as I'd hoped. I didn't paint every day. I didn't work on the novel every day. By Friday the to-do list was not much shorter than it had been on Monday morning. But I sat down and I was able to write up a nice summary of my week, and the things I did get done. It was nice seeing it all written out. And I pictured Dolly, up in heaven opening my email, reading it, being proud of me. Telling me, Honey, this is a great start, and I can't wait to see what you get done next week.

And so my loves and my dear ones,
I pray that any new projects you are beginning
still feel full of possibilities.
May you hold onto September optimism as long as you can.|
And if you want to work with me
on this project of bringing our gifts to the altar of this fragile world,
I'm pretty sure Dolly is still hiring.

Spiritual DIrection

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You are sitting by the river,
and the sun is sparking off the water,
and halo-ing the leaves that glow on the branches.
Filaments of spider web lace the air.
Just like that.

And the little kid is throwing rocks into the river.
And the light illuminates his golden hair
a filthy cherub casting the thirteenth stone.
Just like that

You are sitting in a chair
that was yet another gift of this summer
and the breeze whispers against your skin
and the river amuses itself with the rocks
just like that.

And just like that your heart softens and opens.
And just like that the love of God comes rushing back in.
And just like that belief is once again as close as your breath.

And it’s gone, that empty space you have been crying against
fingers raw with wanting,
bones starving to remember your belovedness.
And just like that, doubt is as distant
as Faith was two heartbeats ago.

And just like that you breathe
down into the forgotten corners of your lungs.

And the Golden Light
on the hair of the child and
in the leaves of the trees and
sparkling off the river looks exactly like
the love of God.

And just like that, you believe again

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The other day when I was writing (scribbling, expressing)
I went to the thesaurus (nomenclator, lexicon)
probably looking for a synonym for hope
I always need more words for hope (faith, dream, confidence)

on the side of the page was a list:
top thesaurus lookups
number two that day was outhouse
and

it got me thinking (contemplating, reflecting)
maybe I need more ways to talk about the state of the world.

And so my loves and my dear ones,

Even with so much of the world being more like an outhouse than we would hope, I am doing my best to savor this last glorious week of summer before the little kid, who at three and half is no longer technically a toddler, starts preschool, and I get to work. For those of you who have been wanting to start Spiritual Direction, I will be updating my calendar soon, and will have lots more availability.

I am excited about the fall, and ready for this next chapter to start. But until then I will squeeze in as much summer as I can. We have one last camping trip, a Holi Festival, maybe a trip to the amusement park, and more ice cream.

And so my loves and my dear ones,
Whatever these last days of summer hold for you
whatever words you need more of
May it be more hope than outhouses.

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I have spent the past 4 days in New York with the little kid and the big kid. The little kid has been absolutely amazing on this trip. His joyfulness and resilience are a delight. He has been navigating the streets of New York so well even if sometimes he does simply stop and sit down on the sidewalk. 😒

We took the ferry to Rockaway Beach, we took the ferry to Staten Island, we have played in playgrounds in Central Park and Chelsea. We have eaten many, many bagels. Only my soft jeans fit now. The big kid and the little kid went to the Transit Museum, while I tried and failed to find an art gallery that was open in August.

We lost a backpack on the subway that had my kindle, my reading glasses, my favorite water bottle, all the eye patches I had brought to New York for the little kid, a change of clothes for him, my emergency charger for my phone, and the rest of our really good snacks. And even that hasn't been enough to bum me out. Not to brag or anything, but I think I'm really good at vacations.

Tonight the big kid and I are going to go see her Godfather play my favorite show of all time. He plays every Monday night and has forever. It is always been one of the things that feels the most like going to church. Even when I was running a church.

I don't have a whole lot of deep thoughts right now. It doesn't feel like a metaphor. It just feels like a really beautiful time. In a city full of beeping and honking and sirens and crashing , I feel a sense of peace. I am savoring the unbelievable gift of being able to spend time with both of my gorgeous kids, even though we live on opposite coasts.

I have a few more pieces of summer. A few more camping trips, and a couple more events. And then the little kids starts preschool. And I will get to work. I will spend my days painting and writing. I am simultaneously delighted by the present and excited by the future.

Every time I conclude a Spiritual Direction session, I ask if there is anything specific I can pray for until we meet again. This past month I had someone ask me for prayers for guidance in discerning their path forward and making good choices. And so as I have been holding them in my heart, I simply see them placing one foot before the other onto a path that gently lights up as they go. It's been so good I've started praying this prayer in for myself too.

And so my loves and my dear ones, Remember that it is okay to slow down, it is okay speed up, it is okay to stop, and, if you are 3 years old, it is even okay sit down in the middle of the sidewalk. Wherever you step today, remember that the ground is blessed to catch your next footstep.

Peace and love to you all

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a
singing
cowboy

He should see me now. Carrying on like I dont know
in the back alley of my heart, behind the dumpster
That I really am unloveable

You know
What I mean
Not enjoyed, or liked. I know I am cute enough and
Useful at times
I know I can entertain

But loved, you know?

I ask my tender battered little heart.
What if we go on like this forever, muttering to ourself that it is okay?
(when it is clearly not okay)

What if
I never find arms that shelter me in the night and
reach for me in the morning without becoming weary of the burden?

What if not wanting remains the only measure of my devotion and I fail and fail again? What if the only thing the ones I love will ever want from me is more room,
more space, more freedom? Until
leaving is all there left to do.

I want to find him.
That singing cowboy who played for Nashville toddlers,
who in had most certainly already seen better singing
and cowboys.

I want to grab him by the slippery fringe and shake him, I want to ask if
I should keep dreaming of being loved?
I want to know if he was right?
I need to know what the difference is between vanity and security?
I want to know if this hope will destroy me or lead me home?
Dammit Joel,
What is the difference between faith and madness?

But he probably doesn’t know either

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I usually publish this newsletter on Mondays. But this week, on Tuesday (today) I was sitting with a friend and realized that I just didn’t write and send it this week. I have pleanty of reasons, but mostly its just that I am not perfect. Last week’s post was so full of typos, I almost rewrote the whole thing and resent it. But I want all of us (which painfully includes me) to be able to show up exactly as we are, and so I am letting it sit as is.

Long ago, when I was still a priest I applied to and received a grant from the Episcopal Church Foundation to become a certified Sex Educator. I wanted to be a sex educator for the church because I was seeing the damage that undereducated clergy and polity were causing. (OH THE IRONY!!) That was right around the time that I found out that I was pregnant. In the almost 4 years that it took me to complete the program pretty much everything in my life has changed. And I think I have been on a hormonal rollercoaster that was pregnancy, postpartum, and perimenopause that just about wrecked me. (May I highly recommend Alie Ward’s recent 3 part podcast )

I have (not) jokingly referred before to myself as an imperfectionist. I want to hope that my stumblings offer the world either permission to join me, or give yall a good laugh and a sweet sip of smugness at doing better than me.

I am now doing a lot of work in spiritual direction, so along the way I switched tracks to become a sexuality counselor. Its all of the same core requirements as the sex educator track but is better suited to the work that I am doing in spiritual direction. (shameless self promotion: If you or someone you know could benefit from one on one sessions with someone fluent in church, theology, kink, polyamory, and sex please reach out)

So anyway all of that to say, back in April, I finally submitted all of my coursework, exams, conference attendance, and capstone project and this week I got confirmation that I successfully checked all the boxes. I am certifiable certified.

My sweet baby is going to be starting full time preschool in September (Yay preschool for all!! the most amazing portland program!) I am going to continue in my spiritual direction work (seriously hmu) I am going to keep writing this newsletter, I am going to do some consulting with a church that actually wants to talk about polyamory, I am gonna give the novel I’ve been harassing for over a year some better attention, and most excitingly for me, I am going to lean hard into painting.

When I was in my late 20’s and the big kid was a little kid and I was trying to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up I was choosing between a life as an artist and a life in the church. Back then I was so deeply insecure about a great many things (like I’m not now 🤣) I chose the church becase I thought I needed a kinder and more welcoming enviroment than the “art world” (whatever that is)

I actually don’t think I chose wrong, and I am grateful for so many things in my experience of ministry and life in the church. But I am once again trying to figure what I want to be when I grow up while I parent a three year old, now in my late 40s. This time I am also choosing the path of art.

I am grateful for you my loves and my dear ones. I am grateful that I feel like I can show up as my messy, typo ridden, competent, tired, sad, joyful, wise, idiotic self. I am grateful for your notes and messages and if you ever reached out to me and never heard back, I am really sorry. Please try again if you still feel like it. I will most definitely let y’all know how its going and will share the work (probably well before it is perfect) I am already painting more now than I have in years.

My loves and my dear ones,
We will never be perfect. Please
please dont wait
do
not
wait
for the better moment
while
this moment sits waiting
head tilted
tail wagging. Please
please dont wait to be a more perfect person.
If you ever did become one
just think how very lonely you would be
in this world of stumbling,
beautiful,
messy,
imperfect,
cherished children of Love

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I had been planning to take the toddler to the coast for the day, but then for reasons we needed to leve later than I first thought and then I almost couldnt go. I had thought about having to wake up early and all the things I would need to pack and how long the car ride would be. I mean 2 hours is pretty boring and long when you’re a 3-year-old. I thought about the sunscreen and the food. I thought about all of the sand, and the drive back.

I can talk myself out of things before I get started really well if I do say so myself. But this week, we did it. I picked him up early from his little Community Center summer camp, we got in the car and headed west. He said he understood that the drive would be long. In 15 minutes in was asking for it to be done. We talked about how beautiful the trees were, and tried to see cows and horses. We did not. We passed some farm trailers that were white and he thought were goats, so I let him have that one.

We made it to the coast and bought our Marionberry scones. We went down by the water and he played in the sand. He played with other kids. He had the best time. There was chocolate ice cream, and a stop on the ride home at Dairy queen, which I don’t think I’ve ever actually eaten that before. We were home by 8 and he got only a little bit late of a bedtime.

I want to learn that sometimes the hard things are not actually that hard. And often they are worth it. And while it’s good to be prepared, I don’t want the preparation for the things to stop me from doing the things.

And so my loves and my dear ones,
my prayer for you this week is
may you just try doing the thing.
The thing that sounds like it would be fun
but also sounds like it might be a lot,
may the fun thing be not that hard after all
maybe the joy that you find
be worth the sand in your car
and the length of the drive.
May trailers look like goats
and may you sleep well after all of your adventures.

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We will be there for six days and have at least two weeks worth of stuff on our list. We’re going in August. (I know, but there are logistical reasons that won out) The toddler has already learned to say it will smell like hot trash and dog pee. I don’t want him to have unrealistic expectations.

We want to eat bagels, ordered quickly and efficiently. We want to get big soft pretzels in Central Park. We want to ride the Staten Island Ferry, and at least one taxi, one more taxi than I rode the entire time I lived there. We will ride the subway a lot. We want to go to the beach, and let him swim in the ocean for the first time in his life. (the Pacific up here is too damn cold). We want to gaze at the Grand Central ceiling. We will walk. A lot. I am lucky the toddler is a great walker. But in spite of the list that keeps growing, (water taxis! Art museums! Coney Island! Dumplings!!) My real hope is to see a brand new city for the first time.

My New York is gone, swept away by the tide that reinvents that city every minute. The people I spent time with then live in Austin now, or LA, or New Mexico. My favorite restaurants have closed. (RIP Chimu Express) My bodega is still there, but the 99c and up store is now a Thai restaurant. When we lived in New York, I was in seminary, and then I was a church planting priest. I hung out with artists, and actors, and musicians.

When we lived in Bushwick, which was at the time a VERY COOL neighborhood, I remember seeing moms visiting their extremely cool twenty-something kids, artists and DJs and actors, following them carefully onto the subway, clean sneakers, and purses held in front of their bodies. Now I get to be the visiting parent, following a beautiful 22-year-old around as she shows me her New York. (Maybe I should get some sneakers?)

My kiddo was seven when we moved there, and she loved New York right away. She learned the subway system faster than any of my seminary classmates. She has known for years that its the city she belongs in. Just about a year ago now she modified the old Subaru station wagon for sleeping, packed up all her stuff and headed out. She lived out of her car for months, then found a job and a curtained off living room to live in. She has made friends and has made community. To say I am proud doesn’t come close. She has taken the hard road and is living a life of her own making and I am in awe.

We will go to the hacker space and the hidden superfund coves. We will go to the places she has discovered and the places she has made. I hope to meet some of the glorious queer humans that are becoming her people.

I’m not going back to my New York. I am going to a city my daughter has made her own. I am going with a son who may fall in love with this magical city too. I am going to witness the glory of a human fully alive (if you know what I mean)

We will still ride the ferry. We will definitely eat the bagels. We will play in the ocean. and I’ll stand there, in my comfortable shoes and watch New York, hers and his and mine.

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I’ve read a couple of your pieces. You say the church doesn’t want you anymore, but you very openly broke the rules, how do you reconcile both positions?
It seems like of a lot energy is spent lamenting not being a part of TEC. Do you attend services anymore or believe in Jesus Christ?
…and…
How do you reconcile your position on sexuality with the vows you took as a priest to adhere to the discipline of the Church?

Here is my response:

Dear Omar,

While I was camping this weekend, I read the comments you left on my recent piece, Faith. You questioned how I can grieve the loss of my ordination and my church while also insisting on being myself, a queer, kinky, polyamorous woman.

The first few versions of my response were, shall we say, ungracious. There is a part of me that wants to prove that I am right and you are wrong. That I am good and you are mean. But I do my best not to overindulge that part of me. And so, I am going to attempt a genuine answer to your questions.

I am curious about you Omar. I googled you. You say that you are the Anglo-Calthic son of immigrant parents. I read a piece you co-authored in the Living Church. I saw the short video of your church with only the words “You belong here”posted the same day you commented on my post about the tenderness of my faith. That video is clearly not for me.

I read your essay about America, where you argue that America’s profound historical wrongs- Jim Crow, the Chinese Exclusion Act, and the xenophobia your own family has experienced- are not reasons to stop loving America. Love, you argue, does not require its object to be perfect.

If love does not require perfection, I wonder why grief does. I am also curious what about my sadness upsets you. I am curious what reconciliation you would like me to offer you for the space between the shape of my family and Canon Law.

Perhaps a deeper difference between us is what we believe the Church actually is.

From reading your work, I wonder if you see the Episcopal Church as synonymous with the gospel. For me, it never was. I thought the Episcopal Church was a community of flawed human beings trying, sometimes faithfully, sometimes terribly, to follow the gospel together. I thought the Episcopal Church prided itself on wrestling with hard questions with genuine curiosity and intellectual rigor. I saw the church as fallible and (I thought) striving ever more towards true grace and love.

I don’t deny that I violated the discipline of the Church. I did. Perhaps a better question is why. I did it for the same reason women sought ordination before it was permitted, and gay clergy came out before it was safe. I came to the point when honesty was my the most faithful response I could offer.

I knew there could be consequences. What I hoped for was not exemption from those consequences but a genuine conversation about whether the rule itself reflected the Gospel. The Church has changed its mind before about the value and dignity of people. I hoped that the church that claimed love and welcome as core values would be willing to explore human relationships with scientific, historical, and scriptural curiosity.

You identify as Anglo-Catholic, which is a tradition with a deep vein of misogyny. I won’t assume you approve of women’s ordination. Perhaps you believe the Church has also erred in allowing LGBTQ clergy. Perhaps you see me as part of the slippery slope the Church has been on for decades. But if you do believe that the Church has, at times, been wrong about who belongs, then I wonder why you believe the Church actually has the authority to mediate God’s love and welcome now.

Women were ordained before the rules changed. Countless (truly countless because we don’t know how many) gay clergy lost their vocations before the Church started marched in Pride parades and hanging up rainbow flags. The Church has changed its understanding of divorce. It has changed its understanding of gender. It has changed its understanding of marriage. Sometimes the people who force the Church to grow are precisely the ones who violate the rules.1

I aspired to stand in that lineage. I had hoped to be among the people who, in defending their own humanity to the Church, helped it grow in its ability to one day recognize what God already has.

My hope was simply to be loved as I actually am.

It is voices like yours that make me doubt that will happen in my lifetime.

I lived honestly ahead of a rule that I believed would eventually move because I had watched other rules move before. I never thought it would be easy. I did think it would at least become a conversation.

Turns out that is a conversation the Church is unwilling to have. That is one of the reasons I write this Substack, because I still wanted somewhere to have the conversation the Church refused to have with me.

My grief, my lived experience, my broken heart, my child who no longer gets to grow up in the Church are not distractions from this conversation.

I am not irrelevant to my own story, Omar.

If all we can see is monogamy as a rule that one either obeys or breaks, then I honestly believe we are failing to see the fullness and complexity of human relationships. The Episcopal Church is free to decide it does not want queer or polyamorous people in its “Body.” In fact, I wish it were more explicit about its purity culture orientation than it currently is.

The word monogamy does not appear in the Constitutions and Canons. The canonical language is “lifelong and exclusive.” The Church’s issue with polyamory rests largely in teaching documents and General Convention resolutions rather than in the Canons themselves. Monogamy is presumed but not named. Meanwhile, a great many divorced and remarried clergy continue to serve despite living outside the Church’s historic understanding of “lifelong” marriage. The Church found ways to make accommodations there.

So tell me honestly, Omar, do you really believe that a Church which has changed so many times will never change again? Do you really believe that the ladies and the queers and the transfolks should have waited quietly and patiently, never seeking ordination? Do you really believe that powerful straight white men would have eventually invited diversity to the altar unprompted?

I do have a problem with the Episcopal Church rainbow-washing its own history2, as though it were not deeply complicit in homophobia. I do have a problem with how the church denies the misogyny woven into its own traditions, and pretends that equality on paper erases the inequity that remains. I do have a problem when an institution takes credit for being welcoming only after forcing marginalized folks to do all the labor of advocating for their own inclusion. And yet, Omar, I had hoped to be one of them.

I do not expect the Episcopal Church will ever welcome me again. But please do not mistake my grief for intellectual weakness, denial, or inconsistency.

I belive that I am worthy of Love. I belive, Omar, that we all are. I miss what I loved. I miss where I thought I was loved. I am not conflicted.

Peace,
Kerlin

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I had so much else going on that it barely registered until I looked up and realized it was already July. I am reflecting on my journey over the past few years and where it has brought me. It’s sort of a bummer, but right now I feel just as clueless about what I’m doing as I was the day I finally walked away from an institution that was clearly done with me.

I have questioned how hard I worked to stay somewhere I wasn’t wanted. It’s a pattern that doesn’t feel great. I have done this with parents, partners, and institutions. Maybe, I think, next time I could try walking away a little sooner. But giving up is really hard. I have faith, it seems, in my unproven ability to change things beyond my control.

There are still days when I miss church, for sure. I miss the rhythm of the liturgical year. I miss the broad variety of humans coming together in faith or in the hope of finding faith. I miss preaching. I miss the sacraments. I miss our common and bizarrely niche language. I miss talking about theology and how it intersects with our daily lives. I miss belonging. I miss my own ease in the land of faith.

One of the comforts I’ve found is the realization that the God I once believed in would still love me just as much as she always did. The God I used to believe in was wildly generous and unbearably kind. She was smitten by the world she had created and then incarnated herself into. The God I used to profess with ease was deeply in love with each of us. With me. With you.

That God never turned her back on me, and it’s that faith that allows me to engage in spiritual direction. It is a gift to sit with folks who are also making their stumbling way through questions of how we navigate the fullness of who we are.

Even though I am no longer in the early distress of losing my ordination, I know I am not done. If God is love, then surely there is room for uncertainty, for wandering, for changing one’s mind. There is room for trying to become more honest. I have not yet finished becomeing who I am going to be.

And so, on this tardy anniversary of losing my ordination, I ask myself:

What do I have faith in?

• I still have faith that Love is the ultimate truth of the universe.

• I have faith that curiosity is a holy virtue.

• I have faith that every single person holds deep and complicated stories that we can’t guess by looking, so we should probably default to kindness.

• I have faith that Love is with us and on our side, cheering us on when we climb and holding us tenderly after we fall.

• I still have faith that there is nowhere outside the reach of Love’s grace.

And so, with my most holy curiosity, I wonder

My loves and my dear ones,
What do you have faith in?
What do you know for certain, even when the world looks very different?
What does your trust whisper to you, curled up under your ribs in the long dark night?
Do you have more or less faith than you used to?
If so, do you have any clues about where it comes from or where it goes?
And please, my loves,
please my dear ones,
have faith at least in this,
You are loved beyond measure and beyond reason
You are precious.
I have enough faith for all of us on that one.

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It’s hard to share the stars with a kid in Portland. In the summer, when the sky is clear and it’s dry enough to lie outside on a blanket, it isn’t all the way dark until 10:30 or 11:00. And in the winter, when the Sun goes down at 4:30, clouds cover the sky.

Yesterday we went to the planetarium. We had tried before, but he always wanted to get up and leave as soon as the theater got dark. This time we stayed and watched Wheeling Stars on the domed ceiling above us. They pointed out some constellations.

The thing about constellations is that they are just imaginary patterns drawn from the stars in the sky. You cannot be right or wrong about a constellation. It looks like a spoon, great if it looks like a cart or a bear, awesome if those same stars look to you like a kitten taking a nap amazing!

Humans are meaning-making animals we cannot help it. We see random points of light, and they become pictures, and we tell stories those stories become myths and help shape our lives. We do it with all the scattered random points of our own experience glowing white hot. The things that have happened, the choices that we have made, become the stories we tell, become the myths that shape us.

Some constellations almost work. The Big Dipper is believable to me. But how did they decide that Aries was a ram? Why can’t Aries be a Jackalope drinking a cup of tea? How he makes sense of the random facts of our lives, the true points the stars in our sky, is entirely up to us. Just because someone has told you it is a ram does not mean that you have to live your whole life believing that it is a ram.

I want the toddler to be able to tell the stories he wants to tell about the stars of his own life. And I want that for myself too, as things continue to shift. I know that the old pictures I made are still familiar; I see that string of stars, and it looks like Orion’s Belt to me, but I also find myself wanting some new pictures. I want to lie back and look at the night sky, and see something new. I want to draw new images that become new myths that shape my life in a new direction.

I’m not okay with the sky being done. I want to trace the jackalope and the kitten. I want to see the kraken rise in the east and the bulldozer set in the west.

And so, my loves and my dear ones,
Let’s keep looking.
Let’s keep dreaming.
Tell me what shapes you see
when you stay up late enough to gaze at the stars.
Let’s show each other our imaginary pictures
and make new myths together.
Let’s navigate by make-believe.
It might be the only way to get where we are going.

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The mug was beside me
on the table by the couch, full of tea, still warm,
just right for drinking.

And his small body is wild
and his joy flings out in all directions.
And I love that.
I really do.

And feet came flying alongside him onto the couch,
and the mug fell,
and the mug shattered.

There would be no kintsugi with this one.

I picked up the shards and slivers.
I mopped up the still-warm tea.
And because of the tea,
and because of the mug,
and because my big old grown-up heart
is carrying grief on grief these days,
I started to cry.

First he said he was sorry, but then he got mad
If your mug had not been on the table
it would not have gotten broken.

Oh my love.
My dearest little miracle child.
My precious. My heart.

I understand.
It is so hard to cause harm.
It is so painful to realize
that your actions can cause pain.

But here is what we are not ever
ever, ever going to do. We will never tell the ones we hurt
That they were in the way of our flying feet

Because I cannot tell him that I have never broken anything beautiful
I cannot tell him that the wildness of my body
has never shattered something precious

I can guide him to apology, to compassion, to the attempt of repair,
even when there can be no reconstruction.
I can show him a place where remorse does not become blame

I held him and I told him I was not mad.
I told him that I loved him and that

I am sad. Because I used to have a mug,
and now it is broken. I held him.
It’s okay baby, I said, I am fine.
and

it is okay to be sad
when something beautiful
is gone

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