Mysticism, Music, Marriage, and Ministry:
Concluding the interview with Kathryn and Brian Christian
by EEWC Update editor Letha Dawson Scanzoni

(Second of Two Parts)

In the Fall 2000 issue, we followed Kathryn and Brian Christian* through their very different life journeys until their paths converged at a remote retreat center in the Cascade Mountains of Central Washington. 

Kathryn's journey had included coping with family illness and her father's tragic death in a plane crash, as well as developing her singing and songwriting talents and majoring in world religions in college. She had married a college classmate for what she considers "the wrong reasons" and then went on to theological seminary. 

Brian's journey took him to wilderness areas in Alaska, the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest, and the mountains of Colorado. In the wilderness, he lived as a hermit and mystic, seeking and communing with God in the solitude of the vast outdoors for many months at a time. 

When he met Kathryn at the Holden Village retreat center, he was sure she was the woman God had brought into his life to be his life partner. But there was a big problem, symbolized by the wedding ring she was wearing. Although they both inwardly struggled over their undeniable attraction to each other, the feelings did not go away but grew even stronger after Kathryn"s three weeks of volunteering at the retreat center ended and she returned to seminary in New Jersey. Brian continued working at Holden Village, all the while crying out to God to help him deal with the questions that had arisen over the unexpected love he and Kathryn were experiencing. Once again, he felt compelled to spend time alone with God in the wilderness, seeking answers. 

* For information on their retreats and Kathryn's recordings, write them at P.O. Box 72, Williamsburg, MI 49690

Brian explained why he needed another wilderness experience to resolve his inner turbulence. "I had had eight years of experience with God, so a part of me was quite confident that God was going to work this out. And yet the passion was so strong." He told me that if he had followed only that passion, he would have quickly moved to be near Kathryn. "But I waited and waited and stayed at Holden Village most of the year," he said. 

The two corresponded sporadically during that year after their meeting. "A couple of times we quit writing," he said, "and then we would resume it." 

He continued: "It was so confusing to me to be so much in love with a married woman that I decided to go to the only place I knew where I could get clarity. I left Holden Village and fled to the bottom of the Grand Canyon where I stayed for the last two months of spring while Kathryn was completing school." 

What happened there? I wondered. "I wept and cried and fasted," Brian said, "and found no relief for my spirit and no wisdom from God." There, in the midst of one of the most spectacular wonders of God's creation, there was no peace. "It was like creation had abandoned me, and God had abandoned me. And I was left in this black abyss, both spiritually and emotionally-the beginning of a dark night. And I knew it was coming. There was also this fear." 

What was he afraid of? There were two deep emotions battling within Brian's soul: "this incredible love," on the one hand, and on the other, "this fear of returning to civilization" if things did somehow work out for Kathryn and him to be together. 

"I had become a wild animal by then, " Brian explained. "I had learned how to survive off the land; I just had no ties to this world's ways. I had no skills left to make money. I had nothing except the wilderness." 

He wondered why he couldn't find some answers-some peace. "I was being called out of the wilderness and into a marriage, and I had fled to the Grand Canyon to find a word of guidance and source of strength. But I found none." 

Perplexed, he decided to leave the Grand Canyon after two months and started to hitchhike across the Navajo reservation there. As night fell, a Ford truck pulled up. Brian's heart began to pound. He remembered hearing some stories about incidents of violence among the Navajo people. 

"Get in!" a gruff voice ordered. 

Fear and faith struggled together in Brian's mind. "I thought, Either this guy is going to kill me, or he was sent by God." 

Brian hopped into the truck. Immediately, the Navajo driver began telling him a story about recovery from alcoholism. He looked over at Brian and said, "Do you know what faith is, son?" Brian replied, "I haven't a clue." 

The truck driver provided his own definition: "Faith is when you get on your knees and pray and you don't feel a thing, but you believe God is going to work." He glanced over at Brian again. "You got that kind of faith?" 

Brian told me he didn't know what to say and " just started mumbling around." The driver and he continued in conversation. "He never really asked me many questions," Brian recalled, "but right before I got out of his truck, he just looked at me and pointed his finger right into me and said, 'You've got to have faith!'" 

Brian watched the truck's taillights disappear down the road. "There alone in the desert, underneath the stars and moon, I just wept," he said. "And I knew that the road I was going to walk would take a lot of faith."

Coming Together

Meanwhile, Kathryn was doing her own soul-searching. "I spent a year in discernment and agony," she said, "because I can't say I really believed in divorce-although I really felt God was inviting me to choose life for myself and inviting me out of my dysfunctional, not God-anointed relationship into one that was." 

When Brian returned from his pilgrimage to the Grand Canyon, he learned that Kathryn and her husband were divorcing. He said the news was "surprising and yet unsurprising at the same time." Kathryn spent a time of transition at a retreat center. When they felt the time was right, Brian traveled to her home state of Michigan to be with her. 

As they told me their story, Kathryn reminded me that, prior to that time, they had only ever seen each other for three weeks -that short period when she had volunteered at Holden Village. 

Both she and Brian speak about the growth of their love with a sense of awe. "It all happened ten years ago," Kathryn said."and we've been together ever since. 

It's just the most amazing experience to be married to my soulmate and the love of my life-an incredible gift and blessing."

Working at Marriage 

They were married on January 12, 1992. "And then we began to work-work at marriage." Brian said. It wasn't easy after a life of solitary wilderness sojourns. "Of all the things I've done, I think that the struggle to a deeper abandonment of self and working through issues-and loving and forgiving-has been more difficult than any wilderness experience." There was so much to learn-"like how to dialog and how to be interdependent and yet true to how God speaks to us as individuals." 

Brian went on to speak about the joy, love, and transformation (as well as the undeniably hard work involved) in the process of two becoming one flesh. "I think that anyone who has been married knows about the struggle of moving to a higher plane of communion and love," he said. 

Kathryn jumped back into the conversation at this point and referred to their wedding promises. "We vowed to love each other unconditionally, to seek God's will together, and to share of ourselves, to be true to our own path and our own experience in the process of the journey."

A New Name 

As a symbol of their oneness and identity, they took a new surname at marriage, a name they had chosen to become their family name. From henceforth they would be Kathryn and Brian Christian. 

"We wanted to be a new creation in Christ together, neither one of us bringing our old names," Kathryn told me. At first, Brian's family found this somewhat harder to accept than was true of her family. That was understandable, since in our society, Kathryn pointed out, "men traditionally don't change their names."

Spaces in Togetherness 

Although the wedding publicly declared their becoming one, Brian and Kathryn also remained two-two individuals with separate gifts and callings. "Let there be spaces in your togetherness," Kahlil Gibran had written in The Prophet, and the wisdom in such counsel was not hidden from the newlyweds. 

Balancing independence and interdependence requires a genuine commitment to constantly seeking God's will and the other's good. 

For a time, the two worked together in a ministry that Brian started, called "On Earth as in Heaven." But he later dissolved it and decided to do missions as a private layperson rather than in the name of a formal organization. 

The couple also realized something else. "We needed to separate our ministries," Kathryn said. "There is so much togetherness, and our relationship is so intense that we needed that clear boundary for our marital health. So now he does his missions, mainly at Catholic retreat centers and churches, where he does missions of renewal, healing, and wilderness stuff. And I'm a church musician but also travel and do music on my own. So our ministries are totally separated." 

This separation of ministries is not a matter of each person's claiming and protecting his or her own turf. Rather, it means that each partner lovingly grants the other freedom to develop particular interests and gifts, all the while lending encouragement. 

Kathryn and Brian's mutual interest in music provides an example. Brian, like Kathryn, plays the guitar. In fact, his guitar-playing provides beautiful accompaniment to Kathryn's singing on her first CD, Ascension, which was released by Ave Maria Press in 1998. 

However, Brian told me that he no longer plays music publicly. "It was getting in the way of spirituality for me," he said, "So I've let go of music and only use it occasionally for private prayer. As close as Kathryn and I worked together, I felt I was letting my own need and desires get in the way of her musical gift. And just as she and I could not do ministry together, I knew that I could not be part of her music journey. So I'm just a gentle little voice and husband, and that's very wonderful. I just want to be a good support to let her fly with her gifts. If she asks for my advice, I will say something. But I trust her gift of music and her love for music and her talent. So I just let go." 

I remarked that no matter how much we love someone, it's so easy to let a desire for control to slip in and to think we know what is best for the partner. Traditional male socialization makes that especially a temptation for men. 

Brian agreed and said that giving up his music ambitions was one of his "great stories of abandonment." He went on: "I'm not overly gifted but I persevered; and then it became apparent to me that, in my perseverance, I was losing my own gifts and getting in the way of Kathryn's gifts. And I laid it down." 

I then asked Kathryn if she hadn't had to lay down a desire to have Brian with her all the time when there would be times that he would want to-need to, feel called to-go out in the wilderness alone or be gone for long periods holding retreats. "Is this a similar thing?" I wondered. 

"Yes, it is," Kathryn replied. "He just got back from Denver. It used to be much worse, but now that I've had some inner healing, it's a lot easier to support him when he goes-easier than it used to be." (I could hear them both chuckling over the two phones at this point, indicating that this had once been an issue-and one they had worked on together.)

Parenthood 

One area where there is total sharing and delight is in the care of their baby daughter, Lydia Grace Christian, who will celebrate her first birthday in May. 

On the liner notes accompanying her new cassette tape, Come, Holy Mother, Kathryn has written of the change and transformation that Lydia's birth has brought to her life: "She has been teaching me about the boundless love of a mother for a child, and of God's deep and motherly love for each of us." 

I asked her about how Lydia's coming has changed her life. 

"One thing it's done for me is teach me my strength- my mother lion, my warrior woman spirit," she answered. "Also, an awareness of the Spirit of Holy Sophia guiding me in making decisions-discernment for this child-has been awakened in me." She said she had experienced a difficult labor, "I just pulled on strength I never knew I had. And then weeks and months of no sleep because of digestive distress that Lydia had. Frequently I'd feel I had nothing left, and then I'd find there was always something left-that God was there." 

Parenthood has been life changing for Brian, too. "Watching him as a father has been so wonderful!" Kathryn said. 

Brian's explanation? "It's all grace. The two things that I feel really gifted from God are the wilderness and fatherhood. Fatherhood was a total shock to me because I never wanted children," he confessed. "I was totally scared. I needed much time away with God and needed so much freedom in my lifestyle. God waited until I was 41. But when Lydia came there was such an explosion of joy!" 

He said that through her birth he received a special baptism from God. "The night before she was born, God asked me, 'Are you ready to abandon your life to parenthood?' And I said yes." Then, in the birthing center, "as soon as she came out, the Spirit of God just descended on me and said, 'You are Dad.'" 

Brian continued: "Suddenly it was like I just knew-because I'm not from an emotionally nurturing environment-just knew what to do! I absolutely love fatherhood. It has brought such joy and richness-and brought my life full circle. The fullness of a mystic's joy is having a child."

Mysticism and Music 

Mystical experience-the experience of direct communication and union with God-is of great importance to both Brian and Kathryn and is foundational to their ministries. 

Lyrics for Kathryn's music seem to fall into three categories: direct quotation of Scripture passages, the writings of the great women mystics of the Christian tradition (such as Julian of Norwich, Catherine of Siena, Hildegard of Bingen, Mechtild of Magdeburg, and Teresa of Avila), and words from Kathryn's own experience with God in prayer. Examples of all of these musical expressions may be found on her two recordings: the 1998 compact disk, Ascension, mentioned earlier, and a cassette tape entitled Come, Holy Mother, released in 2000. 

Come, Holy Mother (the title song is from the writings of Julian of Norwich) is part of a larger project which eventually will be issued as a CD. In its present form, it not only features Kathryn's beautiful singing but is interspersed with the voice of Edwina Gateley reading her own poetry. (Readers will remember Edwina Gateley's outstanding presentation at the 1996 EEWC Conference in Norfolk, VA). The poetry and music combine to present a picture of a believer's struggling with faith during times of feeling abandoned by God. And then comes the voice of God, quieting the soul and lifting the spirit. 

"Gather me Under Thy Wings" (on both recordings), the song Kathryn taught those of us who attended the 1998 and 2000 EEWC conferences, is an example of how her music links her everyday experiences and her prayerful meditation. This is the story she told me about its origin: 

"One day I profoundly needed comforting by God, and I needed to be sung a lullaby like a mother and child. So I started strumming around with lullabies in three-quarter time, and then I was thinking of images of God as my Mother, caring for me. My theological training provided a wonderful concordance, so I looked up images of God as a bird, God with wings, covering me and carrying me. The images came out of my need. That's typically how my music happens. It starts in my soul, my longing, or my love. And then the song is born. I have such a great love for women's issues, women's images, the feminine, that I often use what the women mystics have written, such as Catherine of Siena's 'Set Aside Every Fear and Trust' which is on my latest release." 

I told Kathryn that if "Gather Me Under Thy Wings" was a lullaby from God, another of her songs received in prayer, "Remember I Love You," could be considered a "love song" from God to her. She agreed. "I spent many years feeling 'on the alert' for tragedy, fearing someone I love would be taken away from me. One of my issues is to let go, abandon my life, and trust that God will care for me." It is the experience of moving away from feelings of abandonment by God and deciding on abandonment to God and finding peace. 

Brian makes the same point. "Being a 'married monk,' he said, "my real work is abandonment to God and being faithful to the call of my own transformation. The parish retreats that I lead weave together scripture, story, and reflective silence with themes of abandonment to God, answering the call of Jesus to 'drop our nets and follow him,' and moving with the Spirit. When I lead wilderness retreats, I hope participants will experience a sense of Oneness-that universal presence of God in all creation. I use creation and simple centering techniques to help facilitate this process, leading them to quiet places, teaching through the elements of fire, water, earth, and sky, and asking them to believe the creation will speak to them once they calm the inner self." 

When I marveled at the ways God had guided their lives, Brian said, "I think God gets a charge out of such leading. I think it make's God's day to do it. God is just looking for souls who will really let go, die to self, and just yearn for that pure voice of love-and dance the dance! 

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 © 2000 Evangelical and Ecumenical Women's Caucus