Land Acknowledgement
The Sacred Waters Center would like to acknowledge that our campus is standing on the unceded land of the first people of this area, the Twana-Skokomish Tribe, past and present. As a ministry of the Episcopal Church, we confess that our church has contributed to, or was complicit in, the process of colonization of the Indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere. While those of us alive today are not responsible for what our ancestors did in the past, we are responsible for what we do today, knowing that the colonization process is still in place, and the effects of it are still felt by Indigenous people.
What is now known as the Skokomish Tribe actually was primarily composed of Twana Indians, a Salishan people whose aboriginal territory encompassed the Hood Canal drainage basin in western Washington State. The tribe’s first recorded direct contact with European culture came in 1792 and resulted in a devastating smallpox epidemic that took the lives of many. There were nine Twana communities, the largest being known as the Skokomish, or “big river people.” The Twana subsisted on hunting, fishing and gathering activities, practicing a nomadic life-style during warmer weather and resettling at permanent sites during the winter. Twana descendants live on the Skokomish Reservation, and all have become known as the Skokomish Tribe.
Sacred Waters is specifically located on ancestral hunting & fishing land between "brush hanging over" cove and "view across the canal" in Twana dialect. We honor with gratitude Indigenous people for their resilience, faithfulness, wisdom, and respect for the Earth and all of creation, which we seek to emulate. We invite our guests to join us in nurturing a just relationship with Indigenous tribal people, particularly our neighbors, the Skokomish Indian Tribe, and are called to stand with them in their myriad struggles to recover from the effects of genocide and enforced assimilation into the dominant society.
Stories of Union
Dawn Hanson Smart (https://dawnsmartllc.weebly.com/) is the author of numerous books, including Untangled Intertwined, Crossing Time in Pine Creek, House of Solace, and Path to Portugal. She currently lives and writes on Hood Canal in Washington State, where she grew up, and is contributing local stories for Sacred Waters.
You may not have met or seen Cathy Warner around Union, but if you read the Mason County Journal, you likely have seen her fantastic photographs of the night sky. She became a photographer when moving to Washington from California about 15 years ago. First, with a point and shoot camera, taking pictures of the mountains. During COVID, with a new digital camera and multiple lenses, she had the time and the opportunity to expand her learning.
Comet Neowise, appearing in the summer of 2020, was her first foray into night sky photography. Living on the Skokomish Delta, with the water just feet from her front deck and an unobstructed view of the Canal and Olympics to the north and west, her artistic work took off! And through connections with Washington astrophotographers, she discovered the northern lights could sometimes be seen in our area and captured onscreen. She was fascinated... “What the camera can see in the dark that our eyes cannot!”
But I’m getting ahead of the story a bit. Cathy and her husband Kevin moved to Union eight years ago. After working in Silicon Valley, Kevin decided his next career would be home renovation, through his company, Yellow Ribbon Homes. You may have heard of it as he has had a number of clients in our area. Since moving to Washington in late 2011 they had lived in a series of fixer-upper homes, remodeling them and moving on to the next. That was their intent when they bought the house on Highway 106, but they fell in love with it—its view, the changing seasons, and the intimacy they shared with the local wildlife. “They’re the neighbors we know,” Cathy said of the seals populating the floating platform she’s dubbed seal dock. “They use it. We don’t.” With family living nearby and always wishing for property on the water, they realized they didn’t want to leave Hood Canal. “It felt like the right place to land.”
The combination of her learning, the new equipment, and her location on the Skokomish fed Cathy’s love of nighttime photography. “It has its challenges,” she laughed, “most of my night sky work is done on my balcony in my pajamas.” She recognizes how fortunate we are in Union to have the dark sky and wants to share the experience with people who don’t. She has created and published an annual calendar of the photography for the last few years, proceeds benefitting the Salmon Center in Belfair and St. David’s in Shelton, where she is a lay preacher and worship leader. She’s also involved with the Upper Room’s Greater NW Academy for Spiritual Formation, a group offering week-long retreats in the area every couple of years.
Let’s talk about Cathy’s other love, writing poetry. For thirty years she’s been creating poems and writing short fiction and personal essays for literary journals. She has a Master of Arts in creative writing, graduating in 2011 at age 50, having been in college at the same time as her two daughters. Her first book was one of poetry, and she now publishes books herself, including anthologies featuring local and regional poets that also include her photographs, most recently More Poemographs for Peace with proceeds donated to the ACLU and World Central Kitchen relief in Gaza. “These are my ways of being in community with people,” she says. You can find Cathy’s photography and books at her website (cathywarner.com) and the most recent book through Amazon.
Family is another important part of Cathy’s life. There have been a number of times when she and Kevin have had family living with them. At present, it is her mother who recently moved from California to their house in Union. And her brother-in-law, poet Sterling Warner, lives less than a mile away down Highway 106. He started the Union of Poets in 2019 meeting monthly at The Union Square Deli on Dalby Road with seven or eight participants. Who would have thought little Union, population about 600, had a gathering of poets? Then came COVID and the Union of Poets turned to Zoom for its meetings. It continues on Zoom to this day with 16 to 24 poets from across the U.S. and around the world regularly taking part in the monthly sessions, reading their works to each other.
Cathy’s upcoming plans? April through September is Milky Way season, so she and Kevin will be off in their travel trailer on new moon weekends camping in dark sky areas of Washington, crossing their fingers for cooperative weather.
Studies in Shadow and Light by Cathy Warner
Amid melting glaciers basalt
bastions appear unchanging
Yet every glimpse out the window
offers a glimmering a gleaning
A new illumination
a nuanced noticing
May you who stand so steadfastly
beside me never become
So familiar that I fail to see
your epic and intricate striations
Read Previous Union Stories from Dawn
Our Calling
The Sacred Waters Center for Restoration and Retreat is an inclusive community rooted in rest and renewal, where every being is affirmed, all spiritual paths are honored, and the Earth herself is our healing teacher and guide.
Sacred Waters is an affirming interspiritual call to rest and human-ecological renewal. We are at home in our common union, honoring our inherent wholeness, and unfolding together within the practice of tenderness. Guided by the great love which holds us all, the soft pulse of tree roots, and the quiet tides that move through stillness and wild spaces, we offer inclusive welcome and a warm bowl of soup, remembering that when what is hard meets what is holy, healing flows outward into the world.
CORE VALUES:
Affirmation and Inclusion
– Embracing and affirming LGBTQIA2S+ identities and creating a space of radical belonging for all by making space for the vulnerable and essential work of cultivating healthy relationships, supporting greater mutual understanding between diverse peoples.
Interspirituality
– Honoring diverse spiritual paths and wisdom traditions rooted in shared sacredness beyond religious boundaries.
Rest and Renewal
– Valuing rest as a sacred, healing act, committing to both human and ecological renewal.
Wholeness and Interconnection
– Recognizing the inherent wholeness in each person by celebrating our interconnectedness with each other and the Earth.
Tenderness and Compassion
– Practicing tenderness as a spiritual and communal discipline by offering care, warmth, and nourishment.
Sacred Activism
– Trusting that healing flows when what is hard meets what is holy and committing to transformation through love, stillness, and presence.
Nature as Sacred Guide
– Listening to and learning from the wisdom of the natural and creaturely world, guided by the rhythms of trees, tides, and wild spaces.
Our Leadership
The Episcopal Diocese of Olympia stands at a transformative moment to expand our missional capacity and deepen our commitment to healing and wholeness, racial equity and creation care. The 13.5 acre property adjacent to St. Andrew's House Retreat and Conference Center, which has hosted the wellness center known as Harmony Hill for almost 40 years, has been acquired through a generous donation. This property offers the facilities and spaces to expand our mission of hospitality toward the cultivation of creative practices in racial and environmental justice, prayer and community. The existing ministries of the Circles of Color, Creation Care, St. Andrew's House and Harmony Retreats of Cancer Lifeline have come together to develop this new collaborative calling now named The Sacred Waters Center for Restoration and Retreat.
The Sacred Waters Leadership Council has contracted with Headwater People LLC to develop a strategic framework for building a sustainable foundation for a thriving new ministry of the Episcopal Diocese. Stay tuned for as we unveil plans in the coming months.
We Want to Hear From You
Get in touch so we can start working together.