Interview with Kathy Pfister

Flo: Start off by telling us something of your history, how you came to the Episcopal church, if you were born in it, and how you came to the priesthood.

Kathy: Well, it’s a long and funny story. I’ll make it as brief as I can. I grew up Presbyterian in New Orleans. Our church habits growing up were off and on. There were seasons when we regularly attended, and seasons when we did not go for quite a while. I also went to St. Martin’s Episcopal School and went to chapel, of course. I went there through the 7th grade, and I always had a real fondness for chapel, but it didn’t go anywhere. In my adolescence, I was ambivalent about church and all that.

I went off to college at American University in D.C., and my theology at that point was that I believed vaguely in God, and I believed in the power of love. I still do, and I don’t think that’s an entirely bad place to start. I moved back to New Orleans after college, and I thought I was going to be a clinical psychologist.

I was working at a group home for girls in New Orleans. It was very difficult work, and I was dating a fellow who was really good friends with the associate rector William Barnwell at Trinity in New Orleans; his daughter and the guy I was dating, Jay, were good friends. We were attending a Bible study in a woman’s living room, and we were reading M. Scott Peck’s The Road Less Traveled; that’s where my faith journey began in my early twenties in earnest. But I wasn’t going to church.

My friend Janet said to Jay, “Hey, you’d be a great youth minister. They’re hiring a youth minister at Trinity. Jay said, “I don’t think I’d be a good fit, but my friend Kathy is a Christian; maybe she would like the job.” So I applied, but they hired someone else. Then she got cold feet at the last minute. It was late August, and I think William Barnwell was a little desperate for youth minister, and somehow I got the job.

My entry into the Episcopal Church, the moment at which I began to go to church regularly, was also the moment at which I was actually employed by the Episcopal Church to be the youth director. I thought I would do it for a few years and then apply to grad school. It was going to be a stopping over place for me, but something really wonderful and miraculous happened when I joined Trinity.

I was 24 years old at the time, and it felt like home. I was surrounded by the loveliest adults I had ever known: people who were grounded and kind. Trinity had a spirit of excellence, they did things really well and had professionalism about what they did. And they were deeply kind. I thought at the time, “When are they going to figure out that I don’t know what I’m doing? I don’t know what I’m talking about.” But they hung in there with me. It was a delight to be in that situation in my early twenties when I was trying to become a competent adult. Every time I would have a question, a theological question, a life question, I could just walk down the hall, and there was an assortment of priests and lay leaders who would just sit and talk to me. I really grew up at Trinity. I was there for seven years and ended up falling in love with youth ministry. It felt like a do-over for my own adolescence. I didn’t have a community of belonging and faith when I was a teenager, so helping to create and foster that for those young people was really formative and healing for me. 

In that community of Trinity, one of the habits was to bring young people up to the Kanuga Conference Centers in North Carolina. I made many, many trips up there with young people in the back of the van. That’s where I got connected to the North Carolina scene. The next step on my journey as a lay person was that I was hired by Bishop Michael Curry, who was just then becoming the Bishop of North Carolina. He hired me to be the Diocesan Youth and Young Adult Minister, so I worked for the Diocese of North Carolina as a youth minister for about seven years. All together, I had fourteen years in the youth ministry realm.

It was in North Carolina that I discerned a call to the priesthood. I love conference ministry, and there was a heyday of that back in the late 90s and early 2000s, when youth ministry was a lot of conference ministries. Running camps, coming up with themes, and apprenticing leadership among youth was important. and I loved that work.

As I began to do that, I started to realize that I wanted to be part of the church in a different way. I entered into discernment around whether I was indeed called to go to seminary and become a priest. I had a very supportive husband, and we decided that this was a path we wanted to pursue. Of course, that journey is always bumpy in places and wonderful in others. I ended up attending Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, Texas. That is where I was formed, and it was possibly three of the most incredible years of my life. 

I was 37 years old at the time I went to Seminary, and I graduated at the age of 40. Then, as luck would have it, I ended up as the curate at Good Shepherd Episcopal Church in Austin, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Flo: It sounds exciting and wonderful. What calls you to the Cathedral? What is it about the Cathedral that draws you in, that excites you? 

Kathy: The Cathedral has this reputation and history for being a really, really special and vibrant place, and I have enjoyed ministry in larger systems and larger churches. I have been at a church plant, which has been smaller, and in that process, I realized that I really like being part of big, eclectic systems. Christ Church has this combination of curiosity and welcome and love. You can see it in the breadth of programming, in which the faithful are actively engaged in lifelong learning about their faith and about applying it to their life. That works itself out in a variety of ways through Adult Ed, Religion and the Arts, and the interface with the legacy of Pittman McGehee and the Jungian aspects. It has a breadth and a depth to it that is really exciting.

All of that happens within this spirit of love and real commitment to each other and to the city of Houston. To me, it seems like an exciting place to be, and I’m looking forward to contributing whatever I can to support the mission.

I’m also super excited about working with the team there. Barkley has assembled an incredible staff, and of course, Barkley is also pretty awesome. It’s going to be great to join the team and be a part of what’s happening there.

Flo: Do you have any particular dreams of what could happen at the Cathedral? Or have you not gotten into it that much?

Kathy: I think my dream overall is that to me, the epidemic of our time (besides the pandemic) is fragmentation, loneliness, and people who are experiencing a lack of meaning. When I imagine ministry in any place, but in the Cathedral context in particular, my dream is that we would engage at a level in which people begin to feel connected in the body of Christ and have a sense of belonging. 

In the process of being in community, the stories of our faith, the narratives of our faith, our liturgy, and our scripture help us individually to make meaning of our own lives. That is an overall kind of trajectory. 

How can we help people deepen their faith and for those folks who are really struggling to make sense of a world that sometimes doesn’t make sense? How can the Cathedral amplify or expand or be even better at reaching those folks? My general belief is that the clergy can only do so much of that work. The laity is the body of Christ being Christ in the world that ultimately achieves that in the sharing of our stories and the way we love and care for each other. 

As the Canon Vicar, a big part of my role will be to listen closely to what Barkley’s vision for the Cathedral is, listen to the work of the vestry, and tune in to what is being revealed in that, and then do my best to support it, grow it, and help it to flourish.

Flo: You mentioned fragmentation, loneliness, those things which are rising to the surface at a lot of places these days with the coronavirus pandemic. What spiritual resources have you found helpful to you in dealing with this crazy world that were called to live in at the moment? 

Kathy: Well, do carbohydrates count as a spiritual resource? Other than that, we do like to cook, and there has been quite a bit of comfort cooking at our home over these days.

The spiritual practices for me are walking, getting outside, and listening to music. One of the benefits of being a clergy person is that I am required to preach on a regular basis, which requires me to engage with scripture on a deep level on a regular basis, and that is formative and one of my regular practices. So in the process of thinking and praying about delivering a sermon, I get a dose of some real healing, and it shapes my thoughts and my outlook in a regular way that I find life-giving. 

The last thing I really enjoy doing, that I wish I did more, is painting. I really enjoy painting. I like doing it. It’s fun. It’s one of those activities like walking the labyrinth. For me, it’s a spiritual exercise in that I am able to stop thinking about all the other things on my mind. The monkey mind goes away, and I am able to give my attention to the task at hand. Whether the product in the end is any good or not doesn’t matter. What matters is that for that time, I’m really engaged in trying to create something, so I quit thinking about all the anxieties and troubles of the world. Then, when I quit painting, that break from that romp-around thought process, I am renewed and have more clarity about things.

Anything we can do like that, anything that helps stop the spinning thoughts and helps us re-center is helpful. For some people, that’s meditation. I am a terrible meditater. I have a terrible time sitting still for 20 minutes. But lots of people do that and have wonderful luck. I can do about five minutes. That’s my contemplative prayer threshold at this point in time. But I can paint for about an hour and a half.

Flo: It sounds like your painting is a very meditative process.

Kathy: It is. Sometimes, for example when people are knitting or gardening, when we keep our hands busy and our mind occupied with a certain other type of activity, the rest of our psyche is freed to rest or contemplate. I think it can be helpful. 

I also enjoy reading quite a bit. I am generally speaking a fiction reader. Every now and then I get ambitious and try to be a highbrow fiction reader. But my favorite book is Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. That book gives me such comfort, and I have read it more than once. Since we’ve been in our shelter-in-place, I have finally read Toni Morrison’s Beloved. It’s kind of a classic, but I had never read it. My daughter had to read it for school, so I stole it from her. It is a terrific book. I have started reading a book lent to me by a friend called The History of the Bible. I read that when I have insomnia.

I do tend to have more success with completing books of fiction than I do with completing books of nonfiction. As I’ve been packing up books to move to Houston, I’ve become aware of my aspirations to read all of these spiritual tomes and the realization that I haven’t gotten to a lot of them. 

Flo: For your move to Houston, what is it that we as the church, as the people of the Cathedral, can do to smooth your transition given that we can’t come calling with casseroles?

Kathy: Wow! Well, first I guess I would ask if you would introduce yourselves to me more than once as I’m trying to learn everyone. I wonder, I’m curious, when we’ve introduced ourselves via screen: is that going to make it easier or harder to remember everyone’s name when we meet in person? We will have to see how that goes. Please introduce yourselves to me more than once so that I can learn more about you and who you are.

Of course, I’m going to be looking for a hairdresser as soon as such things are possible, and doctors; all of those kinds of recommendations will be greatly appreciated. My husband is a disc golfer, so if you know of any disc golf courses in the city that he should check out, please let us know as he would love and appreciate that. I’m trying to think of how to answer this question, I’m not sure exactly the answer, except we will figure it out together. We will figure out how to build community in a virtual way, and then time will come when we will get to see one another in the flesh. And that will be a good thing.

I am a phone person also. I know we’re in this age of email and text and that sort of thing, but I am an old-fashioned girl. I like to talk on the phone. So I would just say to folks, feel free to call me and we’ll talk and figure things out together. I’m really excited about sharing ministry with all of you, even in these very strange times. I know we’re going to do great things together.

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