Ritual and Spiritual Practices
Seeding
I took Spirituality of Female Mystics as a cross-registered course at the San Francisco Theological Seminary with Dr. Wendy Farley during the Fall of 2021. This reflection, “Spirit in an Unexpected Place,” was submitted as my final paper for the course.
Interestingly, it was during this course that I first directly encountered theology within a seminary context; throughout the semester, we reviewed the theological writings of female mystics, including European and African American women from the 19th and 20th centuries.
This course also called me to reflect directly on spirituality for the first time, a concept that was wholly unfamiliar to me despite having grown up in a Unitarian Universalist congregation. Through the writings of these mystical women, I began to explore and relate to spiritual concepts and, as I wrote in my reflection, set off on my journey of “spiritual emancipation.”
I see this experience as having Seeded my spiritual growth through the initial interactions with theological texts and the spiritual teachings I absorbed. Indeed, though I would not realize it then, a text from this course - The Mirror of Simple Souls - has become incredibly important to my understanding of praxis grounded in spirituality. I look back on this time as the first benchmark along my spiritual journey and aim to continue my spiritual reflection as I live into my ministry.
Quieting
During the Fall of 2023, I took Revolutionary Witchcraft with Rev. Dr. Pamala Hancock. During the class, in addition to engaging histories, theories, and ritual and witchcraft practices, we were asked to take time on a weekly basis to respond to questions and reflections on witchcraft and its applicability to our ministry. At the end of the course, we compiled these reflections into our “Grimoire,” which is included here as my final project for the course.
This was my first experience with witchcraft as a practice, and I loved it; but, as is represented in my Grimoire reflections, I also struggled throughout the semester to relate to practices that were so foreign to me. I think it was only through this process of reflection and recording in these weekly journals that I was able to make sense of witchcraft and how it applied to my life. In the end, I required a period of Quieting to understand how to integrate witchcraft into my ministry.
Today, I find myself more at ease with concepts of magic and practices of witchcraft; though I still do not claim the title of “witch,” I nonetheless still see myself as a “witchy woman” and understand the power of magic—in all of its shapes—to transform the world for justice. These are the principles that I have taken from this time of Quieting and endeavor to use to support my current and future ministry.
Blooming
I presented this homily during the December 2023 Starr King chapel service, entitled “Grief is a Journey, Love Reaches Out.” I participated in this chapel as part of the Transformative Ritual Craft course with Taya Mâ Shere, which I took in the Fall of 2023.
I surprised myself with this homily. This was my first attempt at sermon writing and “pulpit-speaking,” and, truthfully, I wasn’t sure if my words would be all that impactful within a chapel setting. What emerged in this process, however, was a raw reflection on my experiences with grief and a newly-discovered ease with vulnerability in service to my ministry.
This setting was one of the first times I felt able to claim my voice as a “minister,” and to watch my capabilities in this field Bloom in a real-life context. I continue to be proud of my willingness to engage authentically and intimately with our spiritual community and will carry this experience into my future sermons.
In addition to the above homily, I presented this ritual as part of Transformative Ritual Craft to fulfill the “Outside of Class Ritual” requirement.
Some of the major themes we discussed throughout the semester in Ritual Craft were “form” and “function,” and how creating a ritual with either of these aspects in mind can inform and shape the other. We also discussed the freedom this dynamic allowed us to “let the ritual be what it needs to be;” by specifying a function or form, the other piece could flow from necessity to fill in the gaps.
As often happens in my work, I set out to craft this ritual with a specific form in mind, hoping the function would follow. As you can see from the reflection, however, I experienced a block in my ritual development; no matter how I worked with the form, the function wouldn’t come.
I think there are many reasons for this difficulty, but maybe the most prominent was that, at the same, I was not allowing the ritual to become what I needed in that moment; during the Fall of 2023, my grampy (who was immunocompromised) became ill with COVID and eventually passed in an isolated hospital room, alone. The grief of this event was overwhelming for me and also had a significant effect on my family, for whom emotional processing is a difficult task to begin with. Initially, it felt easier to “push down” the grief and focus on my work as usual.
It was only when I allowed myself to begin to process these emotions that this ritual finally flowed; when I was able to minister to myself, I experienced an “unblocking,” and what emerged was this ritual designed to hold my family’s grief in tender and loving care.
In reflection, I see this process as one of the strongest examples of my ministry Blooming for myself; during my time at Starr King, I have come a long way in helping myself process emotions, in learning to lean into spiritual and ritual practice, and in trusting my capabilities and the mysteries of the universe to provide what I need. I hope to continue to grow my ministry in this way for myself and the communities I serve.