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The Poetic Imagination
with Kathy Henderson Staudt
Poetry and the Contemplative life share a lot in common. Both require an attentiveness to life, a depth of presence, a sort of immersion in reality. Kathy Henderson Staudt is a poet, spiritual director, teacher, and retreat leader who specializes in this overlap. In today’s episode, we’ll talk about: 🔸 How to see the world like a poet (and contemplative!) 🔹 What single experience taught this academic how to live in her body 🔸 The female version of Richard Rohr that lived 100 years ago 🔹 And immerse yourself in some sensual, embodied poetry!
Leave us a voicemail at https://www.spiritualwanderlust.org/ask for the chance to have your spiritual question answered live!
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:29:10
Kelly Deutsch
Hi everyone. Welcome to the Spiritual Wanderlust podcast. My name is Kelly Deutsch and today I am joined by Kathy Henderson Stout. And I feel like the timing couldn't be better. We're in the middle of the Women Mystics school, offering master classes on everything contemplative, feminine, embodied, mystical. But we're also gearing up for our next series on Celtic spirituality, which is a rich path to a lot of similar themes.
00:00:29:12 - 00:01:02:12
Kelly Deutsch
Ritual and rhythm then spaces their sense of wanderlust and that vision of the world where every season and song and sparrow is sacred. And Kathy shares a lot in common with both of these streams. She's a poet, retreat leader, teacher and spiritual director in the Washington, DC area, and her writing and her scholarship. She's most interested in how we embrace and experience our lives as creatures with bodies, seeking to be in whole and loving relationships with one another, and with the mystery at the heart of our lives and of the cosmos.
00:01:02:14 - 00:01:23:08
Kelly Deutsch
Her poetry is a spiritual practice enabling her to dwell deeply in the richness and challenges of life, loss, relationships, and transitions. So right up our alley here at Spiritual Wanderlust, where we love talking about wholeness and liminal spaces and spiritual practice. So I've been looking forward to our conversation today. Welcome, Kathy.
00:01:23:11 - 00:01:25:21
Kathy Henderson Staudt
Thank you. It's great to be here. Thank you. Kelly.
00:01:25:26 - 00:01:44:02
Kelly Deutsch
Absolutely. To start us off today, I'd love to hear a bit about your background. And you can answer this in whatever way you want, but what roads led you to where you are today? As poet, spiritual director, teacher, and all of the many and varied things you do?
00:01:44:04 - 00:02:11:11
Kathy Henderson Staudt
Yeah, yeah. I don't think I would have expected my to wind up as a poet and spiritual teacher when I started out, I was very much, you know, the smartest girl in the class, very academic, very drawn to, the life of the mind. I was raised in a family. I was really fortunate in this. I was raised in a, kind of liberal Protestant Presbyterian family, actually.
00:02:11:13 - 00:02:36:28
Kathy Henderson Staudt
And we we talked about theology at the dinner table, but in a kind of open minded way, because my parents were from different theological backgrounds, and they were kind of learning themselves by once. One thing you can see that's true about our family is we are. My sisters and I ended up in three different denominations, but all still very much practicing, some kind of, spiritual path.
00:02:37:00 - 00:03:02:12
Kathy Henderson Staudt
And I think I had a very lively inner life from a very early age, but no language or model to know what this was. And, so I think it's one of the things I think I have in common with Evelyn Underhill. I think my scholarly work was partly trying to figure that out, you know, where is the language that's not theological language that talks about this.
00:03:02:12 - 00:03:31:07
Kathy Henderson Staudt
So I got very interested in the romantic poets. my undergraduate thesis, I when I look back at it now, you know, when you ask what's the path you've been on? My undergraduate thesis was on the image of the veil vehicle in romantic poetry, the thing that both hides and reveals, in three, in two different poets. Shelley and and, the French poet Archie Randall.
00:03:31:09 - 00:03:55:11
Kathy Henderson Staudt
And then my then I went on and did a PhD in comparative literature again, because that exposed me to a bunch of different cultures and different languages. I had. I have a couple of foreign languages that I that I speak and read pretty fluently. And, you know, the, the idea that there's something real here that transcends language, I think has always been something I've believed.
00:03:55:15 - 00:04:20:05
Kathy Henderson Staudt
But it's also you also kind of need language to anchor it. And I'm a word person. I mean, know. So, so my graduate thesis was called The Problem of Transcendence. And I looked at an atheist poet, Percy romantic Percy Shelley, and a French symbolist, Stephane Mallarmé, who talked about, words as things in a work of art.
00:04:20:07 - 00:04:48:00
Kathy Henderson Staudt
And then I discovered in graduate school this, Anglo-Welsh poet named David Jones, who talks about art and poetry as sacramental activities. And he was both a visual artist and, to me, absolutely fascinating modernist poet. And his poetry is very difficult. But I read he has a long poem where the central image is the celebration of Eucharist in the middle of World War two.
00:04:48:02 - 00:05:09:05
Kathy Henderson Staudt
And I, and there's a lot more to it, but I, I, I was drawn into that poem the first time I read it. It's called the NFL Mid-tum by David Jones, and wound up writing a chapter on Jones in my doctoral dissertation, and then eventually, but there's a whole story between then and then, a book on David Jones.
00:05:09:05 - 00:05:49:18
Kathy Henderson Staudt
So he's been and he continues to be kind of my scholarly and artistic companion, but also his I mean, he was a World War One veteran who was horribly traumatized by the war, and a Catholic convert, like many in the 20s who became Catholics and in the aftermath of the war, who just found in the kind of long Western spiritual tradition, especially Celtic spirituality, that something real, that he did for him was very much expressed in the liturgies of the church.
00:05:49:21 - 00:06:20:25
Kathy Henderson Staudt
And at the time I discovered him, I was also discovering the, Episcopal Church as expression of Christianity, which includes a lot more sacramental practice than what I was raised with. And I loved it. so that's why I became an Episcopal. And my Presbyterian sister says it was my adolescent rebellion. And, so, and so it was it's been in the Episcopal Church starting from I was confirmed in the Episcopal Church my senior year in college.
00:06:20:28 - 00:06:56:04
Kathy Henderson Staudt
I never I never really wandered very far from a Christian expression of some kind. But there was just just a lot that was new to me. I didn't know anything about the mystics. And, and then of course, life, life adventures happened. Right? I think the next real turning in my path, I, you know, kind of started out with playing a got a couple of academic jobs, followed my husband to through medical school and, postdoc.
00:06:56:04 - 00:07:19:05
Kathy Henderson Staudt
And while he was in you doing his postdoc, I had an NIH grant to work on the David Jones book. It was all kind of going along swimmingly. and then I had this experience just about when it looked like we were out in a different city when he was, doing his postdoc. And I was on leave from my, my teaching job at in, in, in Philadelphia.
00:07:19:07 - 00:07:40:08
Kathy Henderson Staudt
And just as we were about to go back to plan A, I just had this epiphany. I remember vividly my my little three year old, two and a half year old was sitting in his highchair messing with his Cheerios, and my husband had gone for an interview for the job that would allow us to be both in the same city and doing what we planned to do.
00:07:40:08 - 00:08:17:12
Kathy Henderson Staudt
And he called me and the phone rang. And this is I call this my Annunciation story. The phone rang. It was my husband saying, it's on, we can do it. And I suddenly realized I didn't want to go back to an academic teaching job. that I the work I still wanted to write my book, I still but, but the work of the life of motherhood has turned out to feel more like a vocation than I, and I wasn't, I couldn't see how it all was going to go together, and, and it just felt it was one of those moments.
00:08:17:12 - 00:08:51:01
Kathy Henderson Staudt
It was just it's not always like that for me. With discernment, but it was just clear. And so everything else has sort of followed from that. and so, so we had another child and moved to Washington, D.C. area following my husband's career, found a church after much searching, and really just about after we found that church and it was, you know, a place where I felt welcome and our kids felt welcome.
00:08:51:03 - 00:09:25:14
Kathy Henderson Staudt
I was diagnosed with, very early stage breast cancer, and I was in my late 30s with two kids under five and as it's turned, it turned out fine. As you can see, I'm still here over 30 years later. But it shook me to the core. It was just a discovery that anything can happen any time. And I didn't know for a while how serious it was going to turn out to be and and navigating everyone else's reactions to that, realizing how many lives kind of depended on mine.
00:09:26:02 - 00:09:49:24
Kathy Henderson Staudt
I was very blessed in having a very supportive community of other moms in the neighborhood and of friends at church, and particularly a pastor who kind of saw where I was. And I remember telling him what I told him. It was like you were supposed to keep it a secret. This breast cancer diagnosis. I don't know, it's sort of a way I think we we we maintain control when there's bad health news.
00:09:49:24 - 00:10:12:19
Kathy Henderson Staudt
You sort of decide who you're going to tell and as you part, because you just don't want to deal with everybody else's reaction. Right. But I, so I remember conversation with, with my priest, who was a guy about my age, with kids, about my age. So probably shook him up, too. And I said, you know, I feel like I've been on a really good spiritual path.
00:10:12:19 - 00:10:38:27
Kathy Henderson Staudt
You know, I've been I've been on a plateau and I, I'm not sure I'm ready for a valley. And he said, I think it's called the Valley of the Shadow of Death. so kind of working out for I kind of went through the whole experience. I got a mastectomy. I had, you know, dealing with that loss, all kinds of things to deal with and really didn't face.
00:10:38:27 - 00:11:06:18
Kathy Henderson Staudt
The fact that I was still kind of shook up by all of this after everybody else had moved on, because, you know, margins were good. I didn't have any. I didn't have to do any further treatment. It was all good. I was cured, you know. Oh, it's over. Only then did I start work processing what had happened. for me and what really helped me was the liturgies of Holy Week, the way of just going through the next, the next cycle.
00:11:06:20 - 00:11:30:21
Kathy Henderson Staudt
That story of Christ. I kind of thought about Maundy Thursday, and I remembered my neighborhood friends giving me, giving me a party right before I went into the hospital. And I thought about Good Friday and the kind of the loneliness of the hospital room, and kind of walked through the whole thing to Easter and that that really was a turning.
00:11:30:23 - 00:11:58:11
Kathy Henderson Staudt
And in the course of that had a number of, began to have a number of really vivid experiences of the love of God for me, the presence of God in my life. and to write them down in my journal. I started keeping a journal regularly and something started coming out that I realized was poetry. Now you have to understand, I was trained as an academic, reading poetry.
00:11:58:11 - 00:12:01:04
Kathy Henderson Staudt
So to let myself write poetry.
00:12:02:01 - 00:12:02:23
Kelly Deutsch
different, you know.
00:12:02:24 - 00:12:30:13
Kathy Henderson Staudt
I said that that critical thing was, was was a big step. so for a long time it was very private, very much just something between me and God. And maybe I would share it with a few friends who would listen, especially when we went to the beach in the summer. My friends at the beach Beach house would listen to what I was writing as I was walking along the waves, but it took a while to really own, the poetry I was writing.
00:12:30:16 - 00:12:58:19
Kathy Henderson Staudt
And meanwhile I was kind of carving out, a vocational path that involved more, retreat work. I had a friend who taught at a seminary, and they let me teach a course on religion and, literature and theology. And so I found myself teaching at seminaries, learning from my seminary colleagues, kind of getting excited about theological things again and trying to put all of that together.
00:12:58:22 - 00:13:21:13
Kathy Henderson Staudt
And I also I guess the other thing that happened was I finished the J. David Jones book right before I went for my surgery. That was very clear to me that I had to finish that manuscript and get it off. And, the, the published, you know, the box with the published copies of it arrived, on my doorstep on Good Friday.
00:13:21:16 - 00:13:22:09
Kelly Deutsch
Interesting.
00:13:22:15 - 00:13:55:00
Kathy Henderson Staudt
Which was very cool. Yeah. So many years later. I mean, ten years after I'd started the book. so, so that that intertwining of the life of the mind and the life of the spirit, I think gradually finding the courage to write poetry, developed alongside owning the life of prayer, finding that people were coming to me for spiritual advice and maybe to get some training about how to offer that.
00:13:55:00 - 00:14:11:04
Kathy Henderson Staudt
And I would say now, my primary vocation is as a spiritual director and spiritual companion. And, retreat leader, but that the poetry and the spiritual guidance come from the same place. Yeah.
00:14:11:06 - 00:14:51:09
Kelly Deutsch
I was going to say that's that's such a rich intersection point. And that way of viewing the world, kind of that sacramental imagination where everything means something is, I think that's, you know, if there was a Venn diagram between poets and contemplatives, that's that's one of the key things that's, that's shared in common. And so, I mean, I was thinking earlier how, you know, most kids don't get into poetry at a young age, like it's not super common, but the, the poetic mind and imagination, that way of, you know, I just think of the times when I would get home, you know, I was like eight we get off the bus and the I lived
00:14:51:09 - 00:15:11:24
Kelly Deutsch
in the South Dakota countryside and I just, like, lie in the grass and soak up the clouds. I don't really think about anything in particular, you know. And that, I think, is that predisposition that a lot of us have to that poetic or contemplative way of life, of recognizing the depths that are there without yet knowing how to put it into words.
00:15:11:26 - 00:15:36:27
Kathy Henderson Staudt
Yeah, I think I was probably 8 or 10 when I wrote home from, from Girl Scout camp about a moment when there was this bright purple flower in the meadow, and it just blew me away. And I remember my dad writing back and saying, thank you for sharing that with us. It was, you know, clear to me that he got, that this was something important about me.
00:15:37:25 - 00:15:57:22
Kathy Henderson Staudt
and later, of course, I read Alice Walker, who said, I think it pisses God off if we walk by the color purple in the field and don't notice. So I think that's, you know, that you're right. There are many of us who have that contemplative disposition, and but we're not really encouraged to develop it.
00:15:57:25 - 00:16:00:12
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah. Why why do you think that is?
00:16:03:28 - 00:16:34:05
Kathy Henderson Staudt
Well, you know, it's fantasy. You're supposed to be learning the difference between reality and, you know, fantasy. Of course, Underhill talks about mysticism as the art of union with reality. So that doesn't quite really quite fly, does it? But, but yeah, I think certainly in my case, the, you know, it was about, you know, finding, finding a understandable purpose in life and succeeding in school and succeeding at the thing, the tasks that were put before us.
00:16:34:05 - 00:17:00:21
Kathy Henderson Staudt
So I don't know that that's everybody's experience. I think some, you know, some kids are encouraged to follow their, their artistic bent. but the other thing is, you know, sort of, sometimes there's kind of a culturally a culture of you have to be good at some, you know, the best thing if you do it at all and the contemplative experience doesn't really it's not something you can be good at, you know, it's just someone you are.
00:17:02:05 - 00:17:22:13
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah that's a good point. And I, I think that whole idea of you know we're expected to be like productive and in a very certain kind of way, you know maybe more the capitalistic Western mindset versus that. Yeah. That kind of fantasy, I almost think of it as looking at the world with like a wink, you know, there's like this sense of mischief.
00:17:22:13 - 00:17:35:12
Kelly Deutsch
And you, you read that in a lot of kind of the Celtic tradition. I love that about them, that there was just so much, vivacity around them, you know, I mean, that's something that Hildegard would talk about them for really toss the greenness, you know, and.
00:17:35:14 - 00:17:40:10
Kathy Henderson Staudt
You know, and that they really, to us is actually the working title of my forthcoming book of.
00:17:40:10 - 00:17:42:03
Kelly Deutsch
Poems. I love it.
00:17:42:17 - 00:18:08:05
Kathy Henderson Staudt
so that, yes, exactly that green life that pulses through everything that, the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas calls it the for the force that through the green fuze drives the flower. so yeah, I think, and perhaps more and more as we're paying more attention to the Earth, this is something that will we will recapture. And it's something the Celtic tradition did not lose.
00:18:09:09 - 00:18:34:10
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah. I'm curious how how you would recommend like, how do we recapture that when we get so I mean, whether people listening are, you know, busy with like three kids and jobs and running errands or they're retired and have just, you know, lived a certain way and are just, kind of used to their path. how do we help, encourage that kind of sacramental imagination?
00:18:34:10 - 00:18:47:27
Kelly Deutsch
The the Celtic vision, the poetic vision that sees life and notices the purple in the field. And I loved your your poem on the 17 year cicadas and.
00:18:48:00 - 00:18:48:16
Kathy Henderson Staudt
You know.
00:18:48:18 - 00:19:02:21
Kelly Deutsch
Like you called it, their treetop wedding song. And they harmonizing whistle wow, wow, wow, wow wow. You know what? I loved that because I often do. We just like, go to bed and like, oh my gosh, the cicadas just shut up so I can sleep, you know?
00:19:02:21 - 00:19:26:12
Kathy Henderson Staudt
Right. Well, and when these, you know, when this brood ten comes back, it's the all the news media is all about how annoying it is, you know. And so that was kind of a countercultural poem because I was loving it. so, I think that to answer your, your thought, I, I think the, the word noticing hmhm is really important.
00:19:26:12 - 00:19:56:17
Kathy Henderson Staudt
Any Dylan says we're here to notice it's supposed to be doing. Or maybe it's it's. Poets say that. They all say it. Notice. Pay attention. But you can do it. You know, when you're walking by, you can do it. I there's a way of nature journaling. I ran across, where you just write in your journal. I notice, I see, I notice, I wonder, that may not be what I learned, but that's how I do it.
00:19:56:17 - 00:20:22:02
Kathy Henderson Staudt
I see, you know. So what do I see? What am I noticing about what I see? Well, I wonder, and that gives kind of space. but I do, I think things I think when I used to be in the midst of the crazy, the crazy of raising kids, I used to turn off the radio when I drove through Rock Creek Park, just so I would.
00:20:22:05 - 00:20:44:24
Kathy Henderson Staudt
I still do that when I driving to Virginia, I turn off the radio on George Washington Parkway, where the trees are beautiful. You know, just, to let it kind of slow for me. I think walking outdoors also is just the thing to do, if you can. And and to have something green around you, even if you were in a setting, all of those things.
00:20:45:12 - 00:21:04:14
Kathy Henderson Staudt
and to read poets, you know, read poetry. Mary Oliver, everybody. It's a lot of people are reading Mary Oliver now because she's so tuned in to this, this quality of, of, the, the life around us. But I think a lot of, a lot of contemporary poets are, are that's where we get our energy. Really.
00:21:05:26 - 00:21:27:26
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah. It makes me think of the practice of taking a Sabbath, whether it's like a media Sabbath or, you know, like whatever kind of moment of pause and stillness and it might be ten minutes throughout your day where you just allow yourself to sit on the couch and look out the window, you know, or. Yeah, it's, it's almost like what we do when we daydream, you know, just.
00:21:28:02 - 00:21:42:00
Kathy Henderson Staudt
Doesn't have to be more than 5 or 10 minutes, you know, it's, it's it's practicing the presence. Right? It's just it's letting, letting, letting what's, what's real,
00:21:42:02 - 00:22:07:03
Kathy Henderson Staudt
Get get back in in the middle of crazy. And of course, with with kids, you know, taking the kids to the park and you know, kids help with this, actually. And if you can see it from their point of view, and, and that it can be a wonderful time of life, but the way that parenthood is structured, at least in my own social location, is it's it's very busy.
00:22:07:03 - 00:22:07:21
Kathy Henderson Staudt
Busy.
00:22:09:14 - 00:22:22:23
Kelly Deutsch
Talk to me a little bit about poetry as a spiritual practice. I mean what does that look like for you. Is it all of these things. You know like it just depends on the day or is a certain more formal kind of practice. What does that look like.
00:22:22:25 - 00:22:54:24
Kathy Henderson Staudt
So I think it's got to for me it has two levels. One is I, I do write in a journal almost every day, even if it's just my daily to do list. And usually part of my journaling is some kind of practice of paying attention to where I am. and I never, I rarely say, okay, I'm going to write a poem now, but what happens is that that practice of attention will sometimes just stir and make me feel like there's something here to pay attention to.
00:22:54:27 - 00:23:16:09
Kathy Henderson Staudt
And sometimes it just comes out as a poem, and I do. I write in my journal in cursive, which means that nobody but me can read it. In fact, I can't even read it myself most time. But when when something that looks like a poem comes out, I print. So when I go back through my journal, I can see those places where something kind of bubbled up.
00:23:16:12 - 00:23:43:00
Kathy Henderson Staudt
The other thing I sometimes do is, if I it feels like a poem, I will think, I'll say, okay, let's let me just try putting this into a form. Can I write a 14 line on rhymed sonnet that's in iambic pentameter. Bump bump bump bump bump bump bump bump bump bump. So it just those that kind of structure puts pressure on the words so that it kind of distills what's important.
00:23:43:02 - 00:24:12:02
Kathy Henderson Staudt
Or a tanka which is, kind of an expanded haiku, structure where you write, it's you, it's five lines, alternating five and seven syllables. And so that forces you to focus on the image, the, the core thing. And then sometimes then I'll. No, it's good when it talks back to me, but I tend to do I've, you know, I was an academic for so long that I'm still pretty much on a, on a program year schedule.
00:24:12:02 - 00:24:42:20
Kathy Henderson Staudt
So September to June, you know, I'm, I, I'm doing my spiritual direction appointments and teaching and whatever. And then in the summer, even though I do still do some of that, I count on three months of Sabbath time. And during the summer I will often, really spend time crafting. So I'll look back through my journals from the previous nine months and pull out some of these things that I printed, and and then you then the crafting is okay.
00:24:42:20 - 00:25:03:13
Kathy Henderson Staudt
So what's the music here? Is there form it wants to take? are there words that need to be taken out? Is there something else going on here and just kind of working it until until it talks back to me. So I, I often go through and just type up all of these passages in, in my journals.
00:25:03:13 - 00:25:10:10
Kathy Henderson Staudt
And most of them aren't keepers, you know, but but then reading through and seeing what, what lands on what feels like a keeper.
00:25:10:13 - 00:25:19:09
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah, I love that because it's, it's so much like the contemplative life, you know, again, that Venn diagram overlaps so much between.
00:25:19:10 - 00:25:20:00
Kathy Henderson Staudt
The.
00:25:20:03 - 00:25:42:28
Kelly Deutsch
Poetic worlds and that of the contemplative. but it's it's almost like you're adopting a poetic stance like this attentiveness. And in, in the contemplative life, I like to talk of it as, like a receptivity, you know, like a Marian stance before reality. And then it sounds like actual poems are just the, the fruit of that, like.
00:25:43:05 - 00:25:44:05
Kathy Henderson Staudt
Yeah, it's.
00:25:44:07 - 00:25:49:04
Kelly Deutsch
It's great if it happens, but it's not like you sit down, you're like, I'm going to write a poem today. You know, like.
00:25:49:10 - 00:26:04:12
Kathy Henderson Staudt
Now I will say sometimes I've had, Lenten discipline of writing a sonnet a day, sometimes just to get myself. If I haven't been writing in a while, I'll do that. And that's also a discipline of humility, because, of course, most of them are terrible.
00:26:04:15 - 00:26:06:01
Kelly Deutsch
Sure, sure. That's it.
00:26:06:04 - 00:26:13:19
Kathy Henderson Staudt
But it does. It does concentrate the focus, you know, to just decide to do that.
00:26:13:22 - 00:26:16:20
Kelly Deutsch
You have a favorite poem that you wrote?
00:26:17:25 - 00:26:39:00
Kathy Henderson Staudt
well, I was, I'm thinking of our of our theme. I can read you, this poem, which is the last one in my, my collection. Good places. I tend to write. I have my first the middle, the not the first one, but the next two volumes are chapbooks, which means that I also put quite a lot of thought into what poem goes next to what poem.
00:26:39:00 - 00:27:00:24
Kathy Henderson Staudt
And there's a kind of, there's a kind of story arc if you read through all of the poems. So these were poems that I wrote during the year. Actually, it was between the year that I was 59 and 60, and we changed. We moved house, we moved house. We moved from one house to another. So it was leaving behind the it was poems from the first house.
00:27:00:24 - 00:27:36:26
Kathy Henderson Staudt
And then looking ahead to the new house and the new garden and the place. We've been here for ten years now, but, but it also, you know, it uncovered a very prayerful kind of experience, of, of the world. And so the, the one I was going to read doesn't say, it doesn't say too much about, about the nature part, but I'm going to read it anyway because it's the one I said I was going to make sure, it's called reveling, which is another word for the contemplative practice, isn't it?
00:27:36:26 - 00:28:22:13
Kathy Henderson Staudt
Just to rebel, to revel. Prayer, Teresa said, will finally be a simple conversation between friends beyond the drama and the wilderness, the dry places and the upwelling springs. At last, or intermittently, we settle to daily conversation that is all. And sometimes, as today, the conversation lapses. Nothing really. Now to say. And even though the silence might appear to be an invitation into some dramatic mystic moment, it is not exactly that.
00:28:22:15 - 00:28:39:29
Kathy Henderson Staudt
Rather, a simple reveling contentment without content, resting in the quiet being here that long love brings.
00:28:40:01 - 00:29:07:12
Kathy Henderson Staudt
And that's an example of a sonnet that's 14 lines. And it was, so it was this experience that I didn't know how to put into words until I kind of try the sonnet form and it lands on. I love the line it lands on. I sometimes use it as a mantra that that pentameter line, the quiet being here that long walks, brings.
00:29:07:15 - 00:29:13:08
Kathy Henderson Staudt
Hmhm does says a lot of it. And that that line definitely felt, given.
00:29:13:10 - 00:29:33:17
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah, it the image that comes to mind with that the the quiet being care that long love brings. It makes me think of just long term relationships. And for some reason I'm thinking of like, aging parents and visiting. And sometimes, like, there isn't a whole lot to say.
00:29:33:19 - 00:29:34:27
Kathy Henderson Staudt
You know, like.
00:29:34:29 - 00:29:54:09
Kelly Deutsch
There's just a quiet being here together. Like, you know, you've you've covered probably the big things at some point in time. And, you know, you may have talked about the little things like the weather or, you know, what you're having for dinner or something. You know, it's something simple, but it's it's the being together that really counts.
00:29:54:11 - 00:30:13:25
Kathy Henderson Staudt
Yeah. That's true. It's interesting too, that this this comes out of a time when I was spending that kind of time with my mother, and she was aging. And the new book was written right after she died with some of the poems in. They were written right after she died. So it's been a way of that. The poetry has been a way of tracking the middle volume.
00:30:13:25 - 00:30:31:15
Kathy Henderson Staudt
Weaving back was from the period when my kids were starting to, when I was sort of seeing that it wasn't going to be long before they were going to be leaving home. So it was elegiac, movement. So it's it has tracked kind of periods of my life. I think that's, that is the other thing that the poetry does.
00:30:31:15 - 00:30:52:15
Kathy Henderson Staudt
It's been a way of, it's been a kind of memoir, really. Yeah. And I'm finding as I this new volume that will be coming out next year is it will be a new and selected poem. So I've gone back and said, what's what am I going to keep? That kind of tells the story. And there become, there's kind of an arc now that tells my life story in a new way.
00:30:52:23 - 00:30:53:25
Kelly Deutsch
Is that the variety to us?
00:30:53:25 - 00:30:54:29
Kathy Henderson Staudt
One already to us?
00:30:54:29 - 00:30:58:14
Kelly Deutsch
Yes, yes. Does it have a release date yet?
00:30:59:03 - 00:31:06:23
Kathy Henderson Staudt
I have to get the manuscript to the publisher at the end of January, so I would guess next fall. And I will come back to you when it comes out.
00:31:06:26 - 00:31:30:24
Kelly Deutsch
Great. Oh, I'm looking forward to it. one question I wanted to ask you. you talk about, you talk about embodiment and our bodies like, being creatures who kind of discover that we have bodies. You even have a poem about the first humans kind of discovering their their embodiment, if you will. And I'm wondering what that journey of discovery has looked like for you.
00:31:30:24 - 00:31:44:18
Kelly Deutsch
Like, how would you describe your relationship with your body, especially starting as an academic who who I'm sure spent so much time in your mind, like many of us do, how did you become more embodied and what what did that look like?
00:31:44:21 - 00:32:09:10
Kathy Henderson Staudt
Oh, wow. You know, when you ask it that way, it it so much. Yeah. Movement out of my head into my body. Some of it was I mean David David Jones as a subject talks a lot about no body, no Christian religion, you know, so, so theologically, I had a kind of understanding of that. I thought it was a neat idea, but it was really the experience of motherhood.
00:32:09:12 - 00:32:34:23
Kathy Henderson Staudt
So I will tell you, a shaggy dog, part of that Annunciation story that I wasn't going to tell you, but it's part of it. so I think for me, you know, I was so much on track toward this academic career. I remember people telling me, finish the book before you have the baby. The university where I was teaching didn't even have maternity leave.
00:32:34:23 - 00:32:52:06
Kathy Henderson Staudt
You had to call it disability. I mean, it was like this was in the early 80s. So, you know, and so, so when I got this grant to go work on my book and still an academic credential, you know, I was going to finish the book, but I could follow my husband out of town and have the first baby.
00:32:52:06 - 00:33:18:08
Kathy Henderson Staudt
Right. So and I think the first thing was just the, just the experience of pregnancy and of childbirth, which was pretty smooth for me the first time. but it it uses all of you. I mean, and I think I did have a I and he and I, we had some difficulty after my son was born with his, feedings.
00:33:18:08 - 00:33:45:12
Kathy Henderson Staudt
So there was all that angst, and I probably had more than a touch of postpartum depression, and we just didn't have framework for that. So. So my body was I was sort of amazed at what my body could do. I remember my doctor giving birth, thinking and taking a shower and thinking, wow, you know, and then of course, dealing with all the aftermath of childbirth, which isn't completely pleasant.
00:33:45:23 - 00:34:08:12
Kathy Henderson Staudt
but then after that, and then of course, I was in I had followed my husband to this new community. So it took me a while before I really had much in the way of my own community. So it was that those first few years of my son's life were, were pretty solitary, until I sort of found found some people started a babysitting co-op.
00:34:08:12 - 00:34:44:02
Kathy Henderson Staudt
But, you know, I was very aware of and I was still trying to write this book. so, you know, so my intellectual life was going forward, and now there was this whole new thing, and I really. And it was something I'd always wanted, and it was great, but wow. And so then and part of that annunciation experience, when, you know, my when the phone rang and my husband was he, he's still a, he still says he was amazed at what my response to there was, but it did set us all on a on a path that has been very fruitful.
00:34:44:23 - 00:35:15:08
Kathy Henderson Staudt
but after that, one of the things that I realized was I didn't want to go back to academia, and I wanted to have another baby. and so here's the shaggy dog and the spiritual part of the story. So I got pregnant almost immediately. And then I had an early miscarriage, which happened on Good Friday. and we were not we were not involved with the church, even though we'd been quite we'd been quite active in a church back, when in our previous town.
00:35:15:08 - 00:35:36:19
Kathy Henderson Staudt
But that was a thing we hadn't done. We hadn't really. We'd been to we'd been to church a little bit, but but I was I was very aware that it was Good Friday and it was. So it was my body in tune with the whole story and, in ways I wasn't even putting into words. I mean, it was just too painful.
00:35:36:21 - 00:36:07:09
Kathy Henderson Staudt
And it was very early. It was like probably six weeks, but, and again, it was like everybody said, okay, well move on, you know, it'll be fine. Although you do find out about all your other friends who had miscarriages that, that, that time we weren't really talking about it much. Yeah. so, I then I realized when this baby wasn't going to happen and we were going to be in this new town for more years than I thought we were going to be because we didn't have to go back.
00:36:07:24 - 00:36:42:16
Kathy Henderson Staudt
I realized I better get back to whatever my identity was. So I kind of threw myself into a bunch of academic, opportunities and worked harder on the book and eventually got pregnant again as we were moving. And my daughter was born shortly after we moved to, to, Washington. But but that but by then, that experience of kind of just giving myself to this process of having bearing and raising children was an embodied thing.
00:36:42:16 - 00:37:05:12
Kathy Henderson Staudt
And raising kids is an embodied thing. I mean, you and you and I, I found I loved it, you know, I loved, I loved watching. I have another poem about my daughter when she was little, rolling in the sand, you know, just, just, well, I'll let me read that one to you because it gives you, that embody stuff from that time of life.
00:37:05:14 - 00:37:17:27
Kathy Henderson Staudt
It's called reality at the beach. and I've got a bunch of poems about the beach, and this one.
00:37:18:00 - 00:37:59:06
Kathy Henderson Staudt
Here it is. Just now, there is nothing else in all the world except this warm and sitting sand flecked with orange crystal shell shards flowing from this child's blue shovel. Filling her yellow pail, she packs and smooths, digs and dumps. Now she dips her fist into the beach and spills a sand pile on her bent up knee watches, fascinated as the tinkling sand fall flows down her ankles, burying her toes around her sounds the steady, solid bass beat of crashing surf against the jutting sandbars.
00:37:59:09 - 00:38:35:23
Kathy Henderson Staudt
The swimmers shouts, the seagulls cries, and through it all, an off shore breeze blows her hair and cheeks. The child leaps up and rolls across the sand, down to the edge of the sea, and, squealing, leaps into my arms. And there is nothing else in all the world just now except those sandy arms that cling around my neck, the salty hair against my cheek, this scratchy, wriggling body and her laughter mingling with the sand and the wind and the sea.
00:38:36:09 - 00:38:45:08
Kelly Deutsch
I love it. I love the there's such a sensuality in the imagery. Like you can feel it and smell and taste it.
00:38:45:10 - 00:38:58:12
Kathy Henderson Staudt
Yeah, I actually as I read it, I thought, it's a, it's a primer for somebody who's wondering when you're immersed in the mothering life or how to how to get in touch with that embodiment. Yes.
00:38:58:12 - 00:39:19:09
Kelly Deutsch
Yes, absolutely. And I love unless that motherhood was such a path for that for you, because I feel like that's such a feminine experience. And one of the reasons why that the feminine kind of archetype, if you will, tends to be so embodied because it's like as a woman, your body is very vocal.
00:39:19:12 - 00:39:22:18
Kathy Henderson Staudt
You know. Yes. It's great. No, I see lots going.
00:39:22:18 - 00:39:29:17
Kelly Deutsch
On, you know, I mean, especially with, you know, pregnancy and childbirth and nursing and menstrual cycles and, you know, just all your.
00:39:29:17 - 00:39:54:15
Kathy Henderson Staudt
Body is your body, your and and if you're trying to be on a traditionally male career path, at least in my generation, the pressure was really to pretend like all of that wasn't happening. Right? Yeah. So, so you know that, and I say my generation, I mean, I graduated from college in the 70s when we thought we had this, but obviously it's still an issue.
00:39:54:15 - 00:40:17:07
Kathy Henderson Staudt
It's not that different from my daughter for my daughter's generation. I think in some ways there's more conversation, certainly about menstruation and miscarriage. And I think the and and but and I hope that the way that I talk about motherhood from my experience doesn't get interpreted as the kind of traditional male idealizing, oh, it's going to be wonderful.
00:40:17:07 - 00:40:43:07
Kathy Henderson Staudt
You'll love it, you know, because the poems are from places in my experience. Yeah. And they're also some of them are poems about loss and weeping and those kinds of things. So because that's the other thing about child rearing that I realized is that every stage, at every stage of a child's life, there's grieving because they are now who they are.
00:40:43:07 - 00:40:47:10
Kathy Henderson Staudt
And that's what you are embracing. But they're not who they were.
00:40:47:16 - 00:40:48:19
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah, yeah.
00:40:48:19 - 00:41:20:19
Kathy Henderson Staudt
And yet you're holding the memory of all of that. And that's a gift to them also because you've known all of these stages of who they are. And, I think it's what we lose when we lose our parents. Right? They're the ones who knew that. All of that about us. Yeah. So, so I've been very mindful of that, and I think and then having this diagnose is when we were just, I was just getting the hang of this, and then it's like, wait a minute, am I not going to get to see this whole story through?
00:41:20:19 - 00:41:32:20
Kathy Henderson Staudt
So really, every for me, every, milestone in my children's lives has been a gift. You know, I've always been aware that it could have been otherwise.
00:41:32:20 - 00:41:34:15
Kelly Deutsch
So yes, there's nothing.
00:41:34:15 - 00:41:44:05
Kathy Henderson Staudt
Like so I think I'm probably more intensely able to rejoice in that, perhaps, than if I hadn't had that experience at that time in my life.
00:41:44:07 - 00:41:54:14
Kelly Deutsch
That's a good point. Yeah, there's nothing like an experience of your mortality to wake you up to just the the preciousness of of little moments.
00:41:54:17 - 00:42:15:20
Kathy Henderson Staudt
Well, and actually, the other thing is when you asked how I got started as a poet, the first poems that I published were poems about the cancer experience. So that also, I think it's, it's another way in which it's prayer, you know, that it helps you to kind of spiritually process the, the hard things in our embodied life.
00:42:15:22 - 00:42:17:03
Kathy Henderson Staudt
Yes.
00:42:17:05 - 00:42:26:09
Kelly Deutsch
Yes. One thing I wanted to ask you about, in the past, you were the president of the Evelyn Underhill Association. Is that correct?
00:42:26:12 - 00:42:43:00
Kathy Henderson Staudt
I am the new president. Oh, you were the new president? Yes. The the the founding president is Dana Green, whose biography of Underhill I recommend to everybody. It's it's title says it all. She's the artist Evelyn Underhill, the artist of the infinite Life.
00:42:43:02 - 00:42:44:16
Kelly Deutsch
That sounds great.
00:42:44:19 - 00:43:22:22
Kathy Henderson Staudt
Like it's great. Everybody should read it. And Dana is Dana is has is the president emerita now and I've, I first and the Evelyn Underhill associate has been around now for like 30 years. I think they, I think they were starting in 1989. and, it's really just started as a small group of people in the DC area who were devotees of Underhill and friends of Dana's, and had one of one of our founders was a lawyer who got us incorporated as a nonprofit.
00:43:22:22 - 00:43:46:08
Kathy Henderson Staudt
And the main thing that we do is we hold an annual quiet day in honor of Evelyn Underhill used to be at the Washington National Cathedral. Now we use a space that's right adjacent to the grounds of the cathedral. and, it's always on the Saturday near the day when the Episcopal Church honors her as a saint for for her feast.
00:43:46:08 - 00:43:52:15
Kathy Henderson Staudt
She's in our calendar of saints, and her feast day is June 15th. So. So Saturday. Yeah.
00:43:52:18 - 00:44:01:05
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah. Okay. So I'm assuming or at least what I've heard in the past is Evelyn is kind of the British pronunciation. And a lot of us Americans say Evelyn, is that correct?
00:44:01:05 - 00:44:02:25
Kathy Henderson Staudt
And it's fine. Either one works.
00:44:02:28 - 00:44:16:29
Kelly Deutsch
Okay. And so yeah. Tell us a little bit about Evelyn, because I know there are so many people who have never heard of her, but I think she is just like I see her as like the Richard roar of her day of making.
00:44:17:02 - 00:44:18:03
Kathy Henderson Staudt
That is abstract.
00:44:18:08 - 00:44:24:23
Kelly Deutsch
Who she was Cecil Ball and she's, you know, make. Yeah. Just. Okay, I'll let you talk. Tell us a little about that. Yeah.
00:44:25:06 - 00:44:48:25
Kathy Henderson Staudt
she so she, she was writing, she started she started out as a really prolific writer of fiction and poetry. and, and she was really interested just in the spiritual path. Remember, this is the era before the before the First World War, very interested in kind of the perennial philosophy and, just what, what the spiritual life was.
00:44:48:25 - 00:45:22:23
Kathy Henderson Staudt
She had some kind of early conversion from agnosticism, which we don't have any details about, because she hardly ever wrote about her in her own interior life. So. And then she, she but she was. And this is where I have the feeling to finish. She was curious. Something was going on within her, and she just undertook pretty much on her own, a study of the the, the Christian mystical tradition and read in depth the Christian mystics and wrote this tome on this large book called Mysticism.
00:45:23:00 - 00:45:23:15
Kathy Henderson Staudt
And she was.
00:45:23:20 - 00:45:29:24
Kelly Deutsch
Trained primarily as an academic. Right. I mean, she was just like, I'm just going to do this on my own. And this is 100 years ago.
00:45:29:24 - 00:45:58:06
Kathy Henderson Staudt
College level stuff was in botany. but she, no, she was it was her own curiosity and her, you know, she was brilliant, able to learn this stuff. And she had, she enlisted people who knew the languages the mystics wrote in. If she didn't know them. I mean, she had people helping her, but she put together what is still kind of the starting textbook about mysticism, especially in the Christian tradition, was published in 1911.
00:45:58:08 - 00:46:38:10
Kathy Henderson Staudt
And if you know anything about academic publishing, you will know that it is miraculous to say that it has been continue in print ever since it appeared in 1911. and it was so that was before the war. and after the and she so it was after the war that she wrote this book and that was published in 1918, which I'll talk about, well called Practical Mysticism, a little book for normal people, which kind of distills a, a basic contemplative practice for what she calls the the, the skeptical, practical man.
00:46:38:13 - 00:47:10:02
Kathy Henderson Staudt
It's all she is is all masking language. She's very much in, in Bardi and, but she, but she's she's living this very well. Must have been an incredibly intense, and ardent inner life while living the life of a middle, upper middle class Kensington hostess and wife of a barrister and wrote, wrote quite wonderful letters. Her letters, including her letters of direction, are just a joy to read.
00:47:10:20 - 00:47:38:12
Kathy Henderson Staudt
and, but after the war, she, she she says that she fell apart spiritually. She and she again, we don't have any details, but she sort of in the course of emerge and she goes into spiritual direction with, Friedrich Fan Hugo, who was a well known Catholic modernist student of mysticism. and, it was only maybe two and a half years that she worked with him.
00:47:38:12 - 00:48:06:09
Kathy Henderson Staudt
But he was a profound influence on her life, and he helped her to really, find a place. She kind of slid back into a back pew in an Anglican church. And, you know, re-embrace the kind of social Anglicanism she was raised in after really considering becoming a Catholic. But she couldn't become a Catholic because of the there was had been a papal decree against modernism, and she just she couldn't stomach.
00:48:06:16 - 00:48:28:17
Kathy Henderson Staudt
And her conventional British husband could not abide the thought of his wife being in conversation with a confessor. So it was it was off the table, basically. but that's also often how vocation works, right? The path it's close to us is also something that tells us about the path we're on and what Hugo encouraged her into her own tradition.
00:48:28:19 - 00:48:51:27
Kathy Henderson Staudt
He also encouraged her to experience Christ in a way that she hadn't before. And she was always. I would say, she was always a what a spirit centered person. In terms of if you think about, I think one of the things you see in Underhill is that people have different paths to the Holy, and the Trinity gives us a couple of those different paths.
00:48:51:27 - 00:49:17:05
Kathy Henderson Staudt
Right? Some people start with God as parents. Some people have a really strong relationship with Jesus, and some people are really drawn by the spirit. But there's a kind of integration of that that happens in the mature Christian path. so then she begins and then she starts offering retreats. And this was a huge step for her, because even though she was widely published, she was a very shy person.
00:49:17:05 - 00:49:43:08
Kathy Henderson Staudt
So the idea of speaking and she, you know, she could write letters to people, but the idea of giving public retreats was, was, she said she felt like she was stepping off a cliff. but her retreats are, I think, my favorite things, if she would. Basically, she had terrible asthma, and she actually died of asthma, ultimately, of complications from asthma.
00:49:43:08 - 00:50:11:06
Kathy Henderson Staudt
But, she so but so she was always working around health issues, but she every year she would write a retreat and she would give it in a couple of different places and then publish it as a little book. So from the 20s and 30s, we had this whole series of beautiful retreats on different themes. I think my favorite happens is one called the school of Charity, which is meditations on, of all things, the Nicene Creed.
00:50:11:09 - 00:50:43:18
Kathy Henderson Staudt
Absolutely brings to life the mystery of the incarnation and all what we've been talking about, about embodied life. and, you know, presents that is kind of the core of a sacramental Christian life. and she's also all about living into our calling. So she talks, well, as you say, the Richard Rora of her day. I mean, she gave a radio address in 1936, which has been published as a book called The Spiritual Life.
00:50:43:21 - 00:51:14:05
Kathy Henderson Staudt
Very accessible, you know, address to a whole public audience. and she uses sort of three parts of the path she says that the spiritual life involves adoration, followed by. So we start with just, And then communion growing into a relationship with God and then cooperation with God, carrying out in the world God's desire for the world.
00:51:15:00 - 00:51:16:04
Kelly Deutsch
yes.
00:51:16:06 - 00:52:02:25
Kathy Henderson Staudt
This was her up finally being a pacifist. which if you think about England in 1939, being a pacifist basically loses you all your public credibility. and so that, I think, was the way of the cross for her. Ultimately, she had certainly people who gathered round and agreed with her. She was also very, she was very committed to intercessory prayer, in a way, although she said she wasn't good at praying for people, but she was very and for she was involved in a kind of world wide invisible prayer group called the Spiritual Entente that was started by a Franciscan in Italy and a woman named Sorella Maria.
00:52:03:12 - 00:52:30:09
Kathy Henderson Staudt
she Sorella Maria keeps turning up. She's I wish I, I don't know if anybody's done much work on her, but the spiritual entente were people who were praying for peace, all through the 20s and 30s in Europe. All. And they had a they had an informal rule of life. And actually one of the elements of that rule of life was that you had to be commit to being to participating in whatever your tradition was.
00:52:30:09 - 00:52:51:01
Kathy Henderson Staudt
So that was part of the impetus for her deciding to be an Anglican. so but, so that that inner life that is, that makes it does something to the world that's also Richard Raw, right? You know, that's that sense that the contemplative heart is what is going to save us all.
00:52:51:03 - 00:52:54:29
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah. And what leads to that kind of compassion and action.
00:52:55:01 - 00:52:55:09
Kathy Henderson Staudt
Right.
00:52:55:14 - 00:53:21:18
Kelly Deutsch
In the world around us? Yeah. We have just a couple of minutes left. I'm I'm so excited for your upcoming class on Evelyn. and the women Mystics school. For anybody who hasn't joined us yet, the women mystics school is available at Women mystics.org, and we've been having such a delightful time just each month on a different female mystic, having a master class with wonderful teachers and speakers, experts from around the world.
00:53:21:18 - 00:53:52:09
Kelly Deutsch
And I will in just, I just am tickled by her writing like you talked about before, how you love words and you can tell Evelyn does too. She just has the way she turns a phrase. I mean, she kind of reminds me of the inklings, you know, like a C.S. Lewis, a G.K. Chesterton. Belloc. Like, they just had such a marvelous way of of packaging ideas that, I don't know, you almost reach the end of a sentence and you're like, oh, like you're like, I don't know if I should laugh or I have to think about that for a minute, but.
00:53:52:12 - 00:53:53:06
Kathy Henderson Staudt
I it's just.
00:53:53:08 - 00:54:16:22
Kelly Deutsch
Delightful. Yeah. So I'm, I'm very excited to hear more about her. Maybe, you know, hear a little of her writings. But, you know, anybody who's in the mystic school will also have the quotes packet that we've put together. so people can at least read some excerpts from her. But if people want to learn Kathy, more about you, your work, your poetry, where should they go?
00:54:17:03 - 00:54:37:05
Kathy Henderson Staudt
I have a website, Kathleen Stout, poet.com. So I think that's probably I try to I try to keep it more or less up to date in terms of what I'm doing. if you want to know more about Evelyn Underhill, the the Evelyn underhill.org is the the website of the Evelyn Underhill Association, and we publish a yearly newsletter.
00:54:37:07 - 00:55:00:08
Kathy Henderson Staudt
Actually, the new one will be coming out probably in the next month or so. and then and we have the annual quiet day that our leader next June is we're very excited will be the theologian Sarah Coakley. and and we've had wonderful people leading those retreats. So, and you can, you can get on our mailing list and find out all about that on our, on our website.
00:55:00:26 - 00:55:09:29
Kathy Henderson Staudt
so I think that's and, and I will, I, there will be news on my website when my next book of poems comes out. because people know about that.
00:55:09:29 - 00:55:12:18
Kelly Deutsch
For ready to Us. We'll be keeping an eye out for that.
00:55:12:23 - 00:55:13:21
Kathy Henderson Staudt
Right.
00:55:13:24 - 00:55:37:18
Kelly Deutsch
Beautiful. Well, this has been a delightful conversation. I so appreciate you taking time to share with us today some of your story and the world of poetry and the sacramental vision of the world. is there anything any, word of wisdom or, piece of insight that you would like to leave with our audience?
00:55:38:24 - 00:56:03:17
Kathy Henderson Staudt
just that I think what Underhill says, I think is just so true that the experience of the great mystics doesn't differ that much from the experience available to all of us, she said. It differs in degree and not in kind, so that that's a thing I think I've kept in mind all the way through the women mystics school, and I think that she she puts that very well.
00:56:03:19 - 00:56:15:21
Kelly Deutsch
Yes. Beautiful. That is accessible to all of us. Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Kathy, and thank you all for listening in. And we look forward to seeing you all next time.
00:56:15:24 - 00:56:18:05
Kathy Henderson Staudt
Thank you for having me.