BAREFOOT AND PREGNANT IN THE CHURCH

It would be the start of a long, sometimes painful, but mostly joyful journey beyond Anglicanism into priesthood. 

Priesthood! 

For heavens sake I didn't know what half the tools of  my new trade were called - the robes, the stuff on the altar, and architectural divisions of a church. I found organ music jarring, I needed a hymn book for the words. The rituals of the Eucharist were foreign. Fact is I hadn't grown up with the externals that are taken pretty seriously. 


There was much to learn  but I wasn't alone. So often when I'd seek an answer from someone in the pews, The answer would be 'I don't know'. 

(I've still never been involved with a Christingle service and have just added it to my bucket list.)  

Fact is, unless you attend an Anglican School quite a lot is likely to fly over your head. Much depends on how your Confirmation Classes are handled. Little teaching on Anglicanism is done from the pulpit. Yet one of the most valuable sermons I experienced was on the Eucharist and its various forms. That sermon effectively transformed the service from traditional ritual to a sacrament steeped in Scripture.

Years later I would work in a parish run by a superb rector who had joined our ranks via the Assembly of God Church. Both of us had such fun taking Anglicanism to Anglicans.

Back to the story. Fr Andrew advised me to discuss my apparent calling with my Spiritual Director and my rector. Their response was basically 'We were wondering when it would happen.'  

My old circle of friends were alarmed. There were not so subtle hints about a delayed menopause. Others were still convinced the church was after my money. My mother was bemused and my sons had learned that I tended to do my own thing.

Then I woke up and smelled the coffee. There was a huge difference between dabbling in religion and answering a call to vocation.  

I booked an appointment with my psychologist who I hadn't seen in more than a year. After the session she half joked  that I probably hadn't ended up in the Catholic Church because it didn't allow women to become priests and I wasn't great at guilt. Many a true word....

That same year my son and I visited Jerusalem where we had the wonderful privilege of staying at the Ecce Homo Convent. It is in the Old  City and run by Catholic nuns. During breakfast a young nun approached me and asked if I was a priest. Of course the answer was no but I had a toe in the water. 

The entrance to the Ecce Homo  Convent on the Via Dolorosa

I, in turn, was curious why she had asked. Turned out she had sensed my calling and that she was going through terrible angst because she believed she had a priestly vocation. But for her that door was firmly shut. It was a sharp reminder of how many Anglican women had gone through the same pain before our Church had changed its mind on the matter.

Later I would come to appreciate what a bitter and hard won battle had opened the door to my own ministry. Also how fortunate I was that our southern African Province was so ahead of many others. At the time of my calling the Church of England was still only allowing women to go as far as the diaconate  - the first step to priesthood. 

In  November 2012,  about 18 years after the Anglican Church in southern Africa decided women could become bishops,  Elinha Wamukoya of Swaziland (right) made history  as the first woman to be elected.  Shortly afterwards Margaret Vertue was made Bishop of False Bay.  

Back to my session with my psychologist (turned out she was Jewish).  I left her confident that, at the very least, I should be going through the formal discernment process.

Soon I was enlisted into a Fellowship of Vocation programme. Ours was a group of varying ages from gungho youth to widows and they were much holier than I was. Nonetheless there was a powerful common denominator  - we were all pretty desperate to crack the nod for priesthood. 

As such we were all vulnerable to the hurts that come with being at the bottom of a woodpile. 

The young men were being strongly advised to 'first go forth and experience the world' and I know we lost a couple of potentially good priests. Once you are on that corporate ladder with a family to keep it's hard to change track.  

All the women in my group were middle aged and most had gender war stories to tell. We would all be self-supporting and would often joke about being cheap labour.

The church may have officially approved the ordination of women but some rectors still had one foot in the dark ages. I remember how one tall friend was instructed to always stand a step below her rector because she made him look short! We were all studying for a Theology degree and most of us had had careers but too many were only allocated responsibilities that were seen as  'womanly' - the Church's version of barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen.

Mind you, I once attended a retreat that included rector's wives and several were in tears about what they were expected to handle at parish level. Professional accountants and even one engineer were expected to do 'womanly'  things in the parish. Yet in many cases those wives were the main bread winner.  (Just as we women would joke about being cheap labour full-time male priests joked about being 'kept men'.)

I had never had to kick my way through a glass ceiling and I was fortunate to be in a parish that empowered women. But that didn't mean I wouldn't get my share of hurts a bit further down the line.

Meanwhile, strategising was what I did for my business clients  and it seemed a good plan to serve on the Parish Council. I was duly elected and should have been great but I still cringe at the 'holy' platitudes I spouted during that year as I sought to convince the leadership that I was priestly material. 

I was awful and not re-elected the following year.     

A JACK- IN-THE-BOX GOD

The Open Door Retreat was drawing to a close. The two-hour weekly sessions, the commitment to 15 minutes of personal reflective prayer each day and the sharing of what we had experienced was a mind blowing experience. Over nine weeks I had interacted with my parish leadership and effectively been drawn into robust Anglican life. (A polite way of saying we didn’t agree politically, theologically, on what was right, what was wrong or the creative value of Freddy Mercury’s music.) 

The two leaders - my Spiritual Director and my rector – and we seven participants had bonded in a profound way.   It involved absolute trust and was pretty miraculous because we were such different personalities. I remember one woman saying she’d been told as a small child that Jesus was always sitting on her shoulder and she still sensed him there. One of the men shared how inadequate he’d felt most of his life. Yet another, believed he had the gift of healing the sick.

None of them seemed perturbed that I really didn’t care whether Mary was a Virgin or that I really hoped Jesus and Mary Magdalene had had a relationship. (I wanted him to be fully human)   

 

The ‘homework’ for the last week was to bring something that reflected what we’d gained from the retreat.  Now, with all the balls I was juggling at home, at work and at church, I’d invariably left my ‘show and tell’ homework to the last minute. I knew from previous weeks how creative the others would be. They would use flowers from their gardens, favourite paintings, music, a candle-lit tableaux and icons.  But I was in a different space. Sandton City had been my Cathedral for decades.  Besides, I was born to shop.

So I gave myself a day off from the agency and set of for South Africa’s most famous mall. There had to be something in that consumer paradise that would reflect what I had gained and how momentous it had been. 

By 4pm I’d literally shopped ‘til I dropped but I’d found nothing I could take to the rectory that evening. A coffee break brought true meaning to the term ‘arrow prayers’ – the kind of praying you do as you drive through a speed trap. I then calmed down to a panic and decided to treat the project as strategically as I would any corporate communication campaign.

What had been the prime objective in attending the retreat? To better understand God. Against that backdrop how would I brand the Creator? It came in a flash. My understanding of God, which already included the Holy Spirit and was slowly assimilating Jesus, was that God couldn’t be packaged. Mine was consistently proving to be a God of surprises, revealed in unexpected ways.  

That was it! I needed, one of those toy boxes that a figure popped out of – a Jack-in-the-box.  Not so easy.

At a toy shop the assistant explained that the line had been discontinued. When I explained what I was wanting to illustrate she suggested a pop out children’s book rigged with elastic bands from which images tumbled when you opened the covers.  I was convinced.

That evening my presentation seemed to go well. Far more importantly I had come to understand that what I loved best was how God had tumbled, helter skelter, into my life. 

Far from packaging my spirituality into an Anglican box that retreat had set me free.

Two huge God-incidences in the early part of my spiritual journey were to give me an irreverent Spiritual Director with a sense of humour and a rector who was a superb teacher. In fact I’m pretty sure that if he hadn’t ended up as a bishop he would eventually have headed up a theological college.

Bearing in mind that I had never read the bible, I signed on for two evening classes he used to give in the church hall. One on the Old Testament and the other on the New Testament. 

I was on yet another fascinating journey. One that involved a great deal of scriptural unpacking. 

NEVER CONFUSE CHURCH WITH GOD

So there I was, hurtling along my somewhat unusual spiritual journey. As I wrestled with concepts like unconditional grace and a Hollywood heaven (I’m still pondering that one) I was also learning not to romanticise the Church.

                                                     I'm still not certain what heaven is

Time was an issue. I was juggling a busy PR practice, participating in a nine-week Open Door Retreat, seeing my Spiritual Director, attending political meetings and keeping half an eye out for a decent man in my life. (It didn’t help that the sexiest guy in the choir was gay.)

Meanwhile, it was beginning to dawn on my caring friends that my ‘passing phase’ wasn’t as fleeting as they’d expected it to be. Their warnings not to give the church all my money were becoming more forceful. A reasonable concern since their only information about religion tended to be news items about TV evangelists with feet of clay. 

They were just being protective because my business was doing pretty well – 20 employees and clients that included the Lesotho Government. I was driving my fourth Merc and holidaying overseas every year. Those were what I now refer to as the ‘RODs’ (rich old days). 

Looking back, one of the biggest God-incidences was that retreat.

Probably because it was the first to be conducted at my parish the other six participants were all part of its leadership – lay ministers and council members.

A key element of any Open Door retreat is that each week you share your thoughts, angsts and experiences in absolute trust – a bit like a spiritual alcoholics anonymous. 

The level of honesty and self-appraisal was impressive. Surprise, surprise, those church heavies also had crises of faith. They were, by their own admission, imperfect at best. 

It was a wake-up call. Church wasn’t an exclusive club for saints, mostly just people trying their best.

At another level, Carl Jung’s theory of a human collective unconscious was working for me. It made belief in God a lot easier and helped me understand the importance of traditions and how symbols can trigger worship.

I was beginning to appreciate that seeking God is a never ending journey, that religion is not the destination. It’s a vehicle. And, just as some people are into Mercs and others give their Toyota’s names, so there are different religious strokes for different folks. 

Anglicanism was beginning to work for me. A nice mix of the high and hazy and less formal worship. Instead of being asked to shelve my brain I was encouraged to approach the bible with a healthy dose of suspicion.

Of course by then reality was kicking in. I was learning how people are hurt by the Church and how very human priests are. There was more. During the retreat coffee break I listened to in-house concerns about issues that ranged from rampant male chauvinism, particularly among priests, to whether tithing should come before or after tax. 

It was the beginnings of my understanding that one should never confuse the people-driven Church with God.