Samhain is the Celtic new year and a time when the ancient ones believed the veil between the physical world and the “Otherworld” thinned, allowing spirits and ancestors to cross over into the realm of the living.

I attended a Samhain poetry and journaling ritual this week, led by my friend in story, poetry and soul, (who, unlike me, is actually Irish, living in West Cork, a place I hope to visit soon).

Clare spoke about how our ancient ancestors chose to begin their year in darkness and stillness instead of busyness, and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since.

I love the idea of starting my year right now, as the darkness spreads over us here in the Northern Hemisphere, a time to get cozy and think about what I’d like to hold on to and also let go of in the coming year.

It’s also traditionally a time to honor one’s ancestors, and I made an attempt to do that earlier this week. My dear Mama would have been 84 on Wednesday.

This year I decided to celebrate with a ritual borrowed from my dear friend Suzanne Rust. Suzanne lost her parents Art and Edna Rust way too early. And each year on their birthday she prepares their favorite meal and eats it while telling stories about them to her now-grown children. Like Mama, her parents died before their grandchildren were born, and in this way her kids have grown up getting to know their grandparents through the stories Suzanne shares.

I have always loved the idea of people living on through our stories, so when Suzanne first told me about this, it stirred something deep inside me.

I knew what I was going to make. My Mama was famous for her cheese ball*. It was made of an entire block of Philadelphia cream cheese, a handful of blue cheese, one fresh garlic clove and two containers of Kraft “Old English” cheese spread, which came in clear glass jars that we’d then use as juice glasses. It was always scooped up using Nabisco Sociables crackers.

I had friends coming for dinner, so I made up a batch. I’d forgotten, until I nearly bent a fork, that the only way to mix it up properly is with your bare hands, and then your hands smell like garlic for days no matter how many times you scrub them. (It was six days ago and I swear my fingers still have a faint hint of garlic coming off them. . .)

The dip doesn’t look like much, but man is it delicious, totally worth spending a week with garlic hands.

In my mind, this recipe sprang from Mama’s mind. But it turns out this isn’t true. And like so many things, I learned this from a favorite Moth story. I can still remember the exact street corner in Williamsburg, Brooklyn where I was standing when I first heard Amena Brown’s extremely charming slam story about discovering that her grandma’s secret chocolate cake recipe was from a box (spoiler - sorry, but trust me I’m spoiling nothing because it’s all in her marvelous telling. . .)

I remember laughing out loud, in what was almost a little guttural scream of joy. But as I walked on I started thinking to myself. . . . something about the story gave me pause. Could it be?

Well, yes. I went home, did a search, and in fact Mama’s special recipe was originally printed on those jars of “Old English” back in the day. In her defense I don’t think Mama ever claimed to have invented the dish, I just assumed!

I wish she were here to comment, but alas she left our material world more than two decades ago. But I ate her cheese and thought of her with love, thanks to Suzanne.

I love rituals and holidays that encourage us to think of lost loved ones. My husband, Joshua, is Jewish, and every year on Yom Kippur we light a candle for each person who has left* us. When we first met, it was mostly grandparents, the occasional much older friend. But as the years have passed the candles now add up in a way that makes my heart hurt even though I know this is just what it means to be human.

And of course in Mexico today is Día de Muertos or the Day of the Dead. All Saint’s Day followed by All Soul’s Day tomorrow.

And it’s a bucket list dream to attend Obon in Japan, where on the third day lanterns are sent down the river to symbolically lead souls back to the land of the dead.

And adore the elaborate textiles on display in Nigeria’s The Egungun Festival.

I haven’t been to the Burning Man Festival in over a decade, but what I miss most is the Temple.

Started by David Best back in 2001, it’s rebuilt annually and encourages festival goers to bring remembrances of those they’ve lost and place them in the temple, sometimes writing directly on the walls, before it’s burned to the ground on the final night.

Let’s end with a poem from the beautiful Wendell Berry who left this world in August. He’s most famous for his poem The Peace of Wild Things.

But The New Yorker magazine chose to honor him with another poem which I had not read until then.

Do you have rituals in which you remember loved ones who have died? I’d love to hear about them!

With love,

Catherine

*I say “cheese ball” but it’s now more of a dip owing to the fact that at some point in the early 1990’s the formula was changed on that jarred cheese. My friend Jenna and I found out the hard way when I made the cheese ball the night before the first Christmas I ever spent away from Mama. I followed her instructions carefully, molding it into a ball on a plate, and placing it on the top shelf of Jenna’s fridge, surrounded by loads of other Christmas goodies. I woke up early the next morning to the sound of Jenna screaming. The cheese ball had failed to hold its shape and, over the course of the night, had slowly dripped down through the fridge’s wire shelves, dripping its garlicy goodness all over the fudge and cakes and veggies below. I called Mama at 5am, hysterical, waking her up. Mama talked us back from the edge, God bless her. But to this day, friends from that time refer to this dish as Mama’s Cheese Blob. . . .

*I’m using words like “passed” and “left” here when what I of course mean is “died” and “dead”. It feels right today, though I’d usually be more direct. To reference one of my favorite cookbooks, a guide to Southern funerals called, Being Dead is No Excuse - Southerners tend to not go in for euphemisms when it comes to the dead - it’s one of the few times we do not sugar coat.

But today I want to talk about a whole classification of creatures who I have come to understand are living, breathing thin places: dogs.

Last weekend I attended the 36th annual Tompkins Square Halloween Dog Parade.

What. A. Joy.

It was produced by my friend Wesley, who came into my life post-Moth and quickly became one of my rocks.

This being New York City, the dogs and their human companions do NOT mess around, the costumes were over the top and truly out of this world. My friends Synneve and Brenner and I sat criss cross on the ground at the starting line. Chrissy Teigen and John Legend led the pack carrying pups who were available for adoption from the ASPCA, and I love the focus on rescues as I’m a vehement “adopt don’t shop-er”.

The costumes were mind blowing. My favorite was a patient little pug whose head became the center of a truly impressive rolling cheese board (the dogs name is Parmesan! I can’t even. . . )

We quickly realized that an advantage to sitting on the ground was that we were at dog level, so we were greeted with snuggles and requests for pets from dozens of dogs as they passed by (our time sadly ended with a doggie peeing on Synneve’s shoe, at which point we decided it was time to go—god bless Synneve who is the best sport!).

But I was hyper focused on finding one dog in particular. During the darkest days of my recent sorrow, a place I often turned for joy was a corner of the internet often referred to as the Dogs of Instagram.

Feeling down on humanity? Go spend five minutes with Isabel Klee, the undisputed Patron Saint of doggie foster moms (I can’t recommend her memoir Dogs, Boys and Other Things I’ve Cried About highly enough, I laughed and wept through it).

Need a good cry? Jump to Thailand for the latest story of dogs saved from the streets by Niall Harbison and his team.

Soak in Tia Salmon and Crimson the Cavapoo - she's a joy, and also speaks to the importance of inclusivity and representation in the pet community.

And just try to stay in a funk after watching Matt Nelson’s We Rate Dogs Puppy Court (spoiler, the dogs are always found innocent):

(And please buy their cute merch, the money supports his 15/10 Foundation which funds much-needed surgeries and other medical care for shelter dogs.)

Thus the highlight of the parade was when I looked up and saw my all-time favorite Instagram dog, Ziggy, aka, “Ziggythemann”, rolling down the street dressed as gnome in a field of flowers. Ziggy is a darling, 12-year-old senior dog who looks like a puppy. He was dumped in Texas before being rescued by the wonderful Waggy Tails Rescue here in New York.

I shocked myself by spontaneously screaming out, “ZIGGY!!!!!” at the top of my lungs. He looked right at me, and readers, I now know what it must have been like to be a teenage girl in 1964 catching the eye of Paul McCartney—I will never be the same. His lovely human, Isabelle “Izzy” Mann* then ran over and gave me a Ziggy Halloween sticker, which I will cherish.

I can’t help myself, a reel of Ziggy’s previous costumes:

But this dog-loving version of myself would not have been recognizable to the me of a decade ago. I did not grow up with dogs and was not a dog person until recently. I was in fact quite the cat person. Cats seemed clean and quiet and low maintenance, while dogs were smelly and ticky and drooly and required walks. My dislike of dogs was so intense that in my 20’s I pretty much ruled out potential boyfriends if they had a dog.

Then it happened.

“I fell in love the way you fall asleep,” John Greene wrote in his marvelous novel, The Fault in Our Stars, “slowly, and then all at once.” (a nod to Ernest Hemingway’s, “Gradually and then suddenly” in The Sun Also Rises.)

When I first started dating my husband, Josh, he’d point out dogs on the street or the subway, showing me the often subtle, funny and sweet things they’d do, that I had been missing. I became vaguely dog-curious. There was then about a ten year period where, one by one, a number of my friend’s dogs melted my heart and began to slowly wear me down.

Victoria Rowan’s extremely serious gray poodle named, perfectly, Victor Hugo.

John Devore’s deliciously scruffy Morley Safer.

My co-author Kate Tellers’ darling chihuahua Luca, who used to jump on my desk at the Moffice and snooze in the little space between my keyboard and monitor, occasionally waking up to give me a little lick.

But the dog that truly broke me was my long-time collaborator Adam Gopnik’s Havanese Butterscotch, who took to curling up in my lap and falling asleep when I sat on his couch working out his latest Moth story or solo show. One day I got off the elevator on his floor and was greeted by Butterscotch bounding down the hallway towards me with such love I thought I might be knocked over (energetically, not literally— she at most weighed 10 pounds). Adam’s wife Martha was away and when Butterscotch heard the ping of the elevator she thought I might be Martha.

When she realized it was just me, Butterscotch was polite and tried to not let on, but I knew the truth: I was experiencing a wall of love meant for someone else. But it planted a little seed of what it would be like to come home every night to that sort of unconditional blast of a love bomb.

Then my son turned 12 and, as if he’d been shot with a malaise cannon, turned into someone I did not recognize. I had been warned about this phenomenon by a beloved Moth story I was honored to direct. But it was still a shock—you never believe it will happen to you.

Almost overnight he went from being this fairly joyful, curious little boy, full of laughter and love for his parents, to a grumpy, angry crank. I worried. But then I started to notice that when we occasionally encountered a dog, a light seemed to go on in his heart, and he turned back into the loving being I knew.

I proceeded to go on a mission that felt like cheating on my husband. I secretly downloaded the app Petfinder and began scouring the internet for dogs. I’d scroll through dog after dog, “hearting” the ones I most loved, narrowing it down. I’d click quickly out of the app whenever Josh came in the room.

Finally I found a dog who made my heart burst on sight, a tiny, scruffy terrier named Scraps who was being fostered in Alabama, not far from my family. We had a trip coming up, so it was possible for us to pick him up and bring him home ourselves.

I told Josh that we needed to talk. I confessed my dog search in a tone that would have been more appropriate if I’d been telling him I’d gambled away our savings. Of course Josh loves dogs, he grew up with one and had taught me to love them. The issue was that we have a little parrot, and, frankly, Josh does 99.99999 percent of the work caring for him. He was worried this would be the same, and I so promised him it would not, that I’d do all the walks and caretaking except when I was traveling. God bless him, he folded quickly.

When we told Harold that we were getting a dog, he literally shouted and jumped up and down.

Yes.

Scraps was not meant to be ours (the rescue group broke my heart by giving him to someone else days before we could get there). But my heart healed quickly because this opened the door for our true first dog to come into our lives.

My sister, Rebecca, found her. Rebecca, a HUGE animal lover, wasn’t giving in to my pouting over the loss of Scraps and sat on my Dad’s couch scrolling through photos on Petfinder. Suddenly her face lit up, and she looked at me and said in an impish voice, “What about. . . DAISY” - straightening her arm with her phone turned towards me showing a photo of another scruffy brown terrier, looking kindly but a bit forlorn.

It was pouring rain, so we thought, why not, let’s drive down to where she was being held at the county shelter, across the Florida border near the Pensacola Airport. My Dad and Stepmama, Sue, said they’d come along, and when my cousin Rhoda and Aunt Mary heard, they said they’d come too. So we formed a Burns family caravan and headed out.

When the eight of us walked into the Shelter, the woman behind the counter, understandably confused, said, “Are all these people with you?”

Um, yes.

We waited in the yard, then the door cracked open and a dirty but peppy little dog trotted towards us.

My Daddy likes to say, rightfully, that, “She didn’t look like much at first”.

She was so filthy that once washed, it would turn out she was black, not brown. But we all collectively fell in love with her.

In New York City, adopting even a shelter dog can come with fees as high as $800, which often covers their transport from other parts of the country, and also requires 20-30 pages of paperwork. But this county shelter was having a back to school special, so I paid the $10 fee, signed a half page form saying we wouldn’t hold them liable if she harmed us or our property, and walked out with her.

We drove back to Aunt Mary’s, and she snuggled between me and Harold in the back seat. I never understood until that moment how a dog could smile. If that’s me anthropomorphizing then so be it*.

Daisy Mae was the piece that magically completed our family puzzle. Harold became a different child the day we brought her home; his face always lit up when she walked in the room, and she loved giving him a million kisses. She lived for scritches from Josh, who apparently gives the best pets. She almost never barked except to protect us from all the squirrels, stray cats, raccoons and possums that dared enter the backyard.

We had learned that her previous caretaker had died, and the body had not been discovered for several days. Poor Daisy was trapped in the house with her human’s lifeless body. So she never wanted to let us out of her sight.

So she was what they call a “scotch tape” dog, but as it turned out that’s just what my heart needed as I suddenly faced a string of shocking losses. . .

She was with me just days after we got back to New York, when I got a fateful call that marked me realizing that I was at the beginning of what would become my long Moth goodbye. She was there the day my cousin Marcie called to say that my Aunt Jo had died unexpectedly, putting the phone to Jo’s ear so I could say goodbye. As I sat sobbing on the couch, Daisy jumped up and pressed her entire body against my chest, her little head on my shoulder, and let me cry into her fur.

After I left the Moth we went on endless walks, which I can see now got me out of bed and outdoors on even my darkest days. At bedtime she would sleep pressed up against me and Josh in the cutest way, wedging herself between us if we were sleeping back to back.

But there was one more loss to come, and she would not be able to comfort me through this one.

Like Ziggy, Daisy Mae looked young. We were told she was six. But it would turn out she was much older, likely eleven at the time of her adoption. Just over a year after she came into our lives, we noticed a spot on her lip that turned out to be an invasive cancer of the jaw which was inoperable. She was cared for with great love by the team at All Ears Vet here in Brooklyn (I will write a love letter to them one day soon). She died in my arms just a few months later.

But Daisy Mae is a forever Thin Place for me. She was a soul mate, and I believe she’s with me still, watching over all of us. I like to picture her hanging out with Aunt Jo and Mama (who were both allergic to dogs in real life, but I assume allergies don’t follow us into the spirit world?)

And me going from being a cat person to a dog person has been a seismic identity shift for me. If this could happen, are there other identities I’m attached to that I might be ready to shift or let go of?

Have you ever had an animal soul mate? Or completely changed your mind about something you were once so sure of? I’d love to hear about it.

Always, with much love,

Catherine

*Small world: Ziggy’s mama Izzy Mann is a Broadway producer who is most recently co-producer on Bess Wohl’s Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning Liberation - Bess and I have been friends since we worked on a movie as baby adults in Boston in the mid 1990’s, so fun.

*My friend Sandi told me that domestic dogs possess a specialized facial muscle called the levator anguli oculi medialis, which allows them to raise their inner eyebrows to create a human-like gaze. This muscle is almost completely absent in wild gray wolves, their closest ancestors. We have subconsciously bred them to have “human” features. I’m here for it.

I have a soul-feeding habit of pasting my favorite poems into a beautiful orange and gold velvet notebook that I bought when visiting London as a teenager. It couldn’t have cost more than 15 pounds, maybe even less, but I remember it felt like a fortune at the time. It’s a treasured item in my life to this day, so I’m glad 17-year-old me made the decision to fork over her limited funds.

The news is so relentless. The lack of humanity, cruel jokes and shocking ugliness flowing through even my own social media feeds feels debilitating to me many days. But yesterday I remembered this poem, and reading it through a few times helped.

Though There are Torturers

by Michael Coady

Though there are torturers in the world

There are also musicians.

Though, at this moment,

Men are screaming in prisons,

There are jazzmen raising storms

Of sensuous celebration,

And orchestras releasing

Glories of the Spirit.

Though the image of God

Is everywhere defiled,

A man in West Clare

Is playing the concertina,

The Sistine Choir is levitating

Under the dome of St. Peter’s,

And a drunk man on the road

Is singing, for no reason.

Speaking of musicians who levitate, Jon Batiste has a gorgeous habit of marching out of his own concerts and leading his band and the crowd in a spirited, music-drenched march through the streets of whatever town they are in - praying I get to be a part of it one day, but in the meantime soaking up the online clips.

And if you are feeling a little down and are not following his elderly, mostly hairless rescue dog, Lentil Batiste and her siblings (the “baby grandmas”) in their home at the Whispering Pines Retirement Village (written with hilarious brilliance by Jon’s wife, the etherial Suleika Jaouad), then you have only yourself to blame.

Sara Bareilles is currently on tour in the US, promoting her stunning new album which is all about grief. I saw the documentary about the making of the album at this year’s Tribeca Festival, and was blown away. I was gifted a ticket to the show by a beloved friend, and the concert was a revelation. The show was full of storytelling - Sara encouraged the public to send in voicemails about their own grief in advance, and she plays them in between songs - deeply moving. And that set!

Three more things that kept me going this month:

1. Last week an elderly Syrian man named Abu Bila took a hammer to his own wall. He’d built the wall in 2011 as a way of sealing off his son’s private library before fleeing to Kuwait to escape Assad’s forces. As a lover of books, this lifted my spirits. You can watch here:

2. In love with the idea of Dolly Day, which happened two days ago, September 25 (aka nine two five). Like so many of us I was heartbroken by her death. But I was also inspired reading about her philanthropy, only some of which I was aware of previously. Can we evolve Dolly Day into a national day of giving? I’ll start us out with a donation to The Equal Justice Initiative and my cousins Kendra and Dave’s fundraising walk for Alzheimer’s research.

   

3. Grateful for Atlanta’s Ada Dindi who is my favorite person on Instagram. My favorite videos are like this one, where she stands in a creek and yells at all of us to do better. Follow her if you need a boost of daily joy and inspiration.

As always, with love,

Catherine

I love synchronicities and coincidences and have long seen them as a way to receive a little nod from the Divine*.

Today would have been my beloved Aunt Jo’s 80th birthday. I spent what (we had no idea) would be her last birthday with her three years ago. It was just a few months after I left the Moth, and I was actively grieving daily contact with my long-time colleagues, work that I deeply loved (even though I knew it was time to walk away), and a nearly two decade-long identity.

But I’d put on a brave face and flown to Aunt Jo’s home in Nashville to spend the week of her birthday with her. We had big plans: manicures. . . then hit the Red Lobster’s Endless Shrimp special.

But days before I arrived, Aunt Jo was rushed to the hospital where she went into cardiac arrest. She was miraculously brought back by the doctors, and I spent a fragile week with her in the hospital, fueled with hundreds of texts with her daughter, my cousin, Kendra.

She got better and was released from the hospital. But then things suddenly went sideways again, and this time she was really gone.

The loss, on top of everything I was already going through, felt unbearable. Aunt Jo was my long-dead mother’s only sibling, and more like a second mother to me. She was a minister and reiki healer who had married me and my husband Josh. We were both fire dancers.

She and I were both obsessed with the poetry of John O’Donohue, so when her daughters asked me to speak at her funeral—a huge honor—I ended my eulogy with his poem, “On the Death of the Beloved” which had been one of the last things she’d posted to social media, almost as if she was leaving it there for me to find. I chose to bring the physical book with me because it’s gorgeous, and I wanted to end my love letter to Aunt Jo holding it in my hands.

The funeral was a terrible, unwanted distraction, but still, a distraction from my Moth grief and confusion over what was to come. As my plane touched back down in New York City, I felt my day to day problems return as we taxied, now facing them without the rock of Aunt Jo.

I turned my phone on, and immediately a message popped up. It was from Lizzie, a new, but deep soul friend. We’d met six months before at an out of town podcasting event, and got close quickly in that way you sometimes can while whispering in the dark on a bus shuttling us from our hotel to the San Francisco public radio station. We shared things that you don’t necessarily talk about every day, but which can sometimes come alive between two recent strangers/now friends.

In her note, Lizzie told me she’d taken some time off her job to go on a solo road trip and think about some of the life questions we’d discussed. She’d brought a book of poetry, and a poem she’d just read had made her think of me and she wanted to share it.

She’d gone old school, attaching a photo of the physical book v. copying and pasting the poem from a website.

I was stunned to see a poem from the very book that was in my purse at that moment, and not a current best seller, one that had been out for the better part of two decades!

What were the chances?

I knew Aunt Jo was speaking to me through Lizzie. Here’s the poem they sent:

I want to believe that wherever she was, Aunt Jo could see some future for me that I couldn’t yet see for myself and was telling me to have courage.

Do you believe the dead can speak to us, either literally or figuratively? Have you ever had a synchronicity that felt like you were hearing from the other side? If so, please share it with me in the comments!

With love,

Catherine

*I just learned from Heather (who kindly read this for me in advance, thank you, Heather!) that some people capitalize Divine. A quick Google reveals that, “Some writers capitalize “Divine” as a noun or adjective to show respect and sacredness, though this remains a stylistic choice.” Love this, I’m in.

Hello friends,

I’m Catherine Burns, storytelling architect and former long-time Artistic Director of The Moth. Welcome to my new gathering place. This is where I’ll let everyone in my life know what I’m up to.*

The name comes from my Celtic ancestors, an idea I’ve loved for a long time: thin places—locations on Earth where the veil between the material world and the unseen is thinner. Sacred spaces filled with mystery where you can feel something bigger pressing close.

I first encountered the idea listening to the late soulful poet John O’Donohue, who in his beautiful Irish way spoke of ancient islands and wild coastlines. And at the time I thought, But I think there can also be human-created Thin Places. . .

And over time, and deeply affected by the thousands of stories I’ve had the honor of hearing and midwifing, I’ve come to believe something else.

I think thin places can be consciously created.

I’ve seen them appear between two, often wildly different people, when one has the gumption to finally speak a truth aloud. I’ve felt them crack open when someone shows up with grace instead of armor, or humor instead of fear—even (or especially) when it’s messy or imperfect or unresolved. So often, healing takes place when we see ourselves in each other’s stories

But there’s also something else driving me. The truth is, the last three years have been some of the hardest of my life, both personally and in a “watch the world go up in flames” sort of way. I’ve found myself at times feeling angry, even bitter, and wondering if I’ve been wrong all along and actually people just SUCK.

It all nearly broke me. But there is some piece of my heart that is still beating strong, and I am now leaning into that in an attempt to make myself whole again.

That anxious, wounded version of me is not how I want to show up in the world. So I’m going to try to believe in the possibility of decency. To show up with nuanced compassion for the good, the bad and the messy middle. To have faith that even if there are deeply troubling and unbearable things happening in the world, we can still make a difference one ordinary moment at a time.

This Substack, The Thin Places, is an experiment in that belief.

It’s a place to reflect on stories, moments of awe, and encounters that thin the veil. Kind strangers, synchronicities, and other holy moments. And to explore how we might actively create more of those moments in our own lives—not by being perfect or enlightened, but by being present, curious, brave, and kind.

By taking each other seriously.

By noticing.

By telling the truth with heart, even when being vulnerable feels scary.

And daring to listen when others do the same.

My hope is that these short weekly emails will feel less like content (a word that makes my heart shrink) and more like a clearing. A sacred pause. And if you choose to join me in the experiment*, I hope you’ll share what you discover. A podcast with the same name, hosted by me, will be coming later this year, stay tuned!

Have you ever experienced a Thin Place? I’d love to hear about it in the comments!

With love,
Catherine