NO VOCATION UNDER THE DUVET

Writing this blog has been a wake-up call.

I have always fallen short in the retentive memory department and I really battle to recognise people until I have had a lot of interaction with them.

The former translates into cramming for school exams, struggling to remember names in my congregations, forgetting birthdays and the dates of life’s milestones. The latter is a mild form of ‘face blindness’ which is why it didn’t help when the Lesotho police once put me in the same room as a man who had held a gun to my head the night before.



I’d helped them capture him and his accomplices but he’d changed his distinctive tee shirt and red shoes which I would have recognised like a shot. He was also too far from me in the large room to pick out his distinctive body odour which I still recall 40 years later.

Of course the cops had to let him go.

Reams have been written about face-blindness, which in its extreme form is called prosopagnosia and is a neurological disorder. Who knows, my mother may have dropped me on my head as a baby but I’m pretty certain that both deficiencies are the outcome of being an adored only child primarily focussed on future achievement and self.

It hurts

Problem is, I hurt people, as in when I confused two women in my parish. The one had visited me in my home with her husband but I mistook another for her the following Sunday.


It’s why when I shop in our local mall I smile and greet all shop assistants – many of my parish work there. I also do a lot of nodding and eye contact as I wander for shop to shop. If anyone half smiles at me I do a proper greeting. (Father Christmas and I should open a charm school together.)

A fuzzy past



As I blogged my journey towards Anglicanism and my rather unusual priesthood, I was forced to work out dates and remember details that were part of the blur of my past. Looking back, I am amazed that my lifelong friends have stuck with me. (Spare a thought too for the rectors I have worked under and my bishops.)

The now

The blog was also a whole lot more. It forced me to take measure of the present. One in which I, a ‘retired priest’, pick and choose my involvement with Church. I commiserate with friends who still have to attend Council meetings and synods as well as deal with pew politics. I pontificate on Facebook. Twitter, Google+ and in the blogosphere.



By the 20th post it was becoming increasingly more difficult to write. Besides being thoroughly bored with myself, the blog was a convenient distraction from the relevance of my present relationship with God and my chosen Church.

I’d forgotten the key lesson I’d learned so many years ago from the Mother’s Union at St James in Diepkloof, Soweto: There is no retirement from God or ministry. Vocational seasons may end but you can’t spend the Winter of your life in bed with a duvet over your head.





The blog posts proved a soul-jolting alert that I had allowed myself to drop into a quagmire of complacency. I’d forgotten the long hard journey I’d undergone to reach an understanding that my prime vocation lies in my talent for communication, not parish ministry.

I’d forgotten, and hadn’t even blogged about, the long battle to accept that editing the Southern Anglican magazine, serving as the archbishop’s international media person and using my writing skills was my vocation.

In recent years I’ve effectively relegated my vocation to ‘the good old days’.

As I reached blog post 32 it was like pushing a wheelbarrow full of rocks. December offered the excuse to take a break. Blog 33 wasn’t any easier, particularly within my personal anger of yet another Anglican delay regarding homosexuality. When I re-read that rant I knew it was less about my relationship with Anglicanism and a whole lot to do with spending the winter of my vocation under a duvet.

For what it’s worth, herewith the result of my reflections. If anything they prove, yet again, that there are no coincidences. They are God-incidences. And, yes, God does have a sense of humour.

The first step was to acknowledge that my vocation is not to swan in and out of my parish on high days and when the rector is on leave. I may have to use Google a whole lot more these days but I can still write.

So, if writing and editing is my ministry where do I stand?

Ever stood on a rake and had the handle swat your nose? That’s what happened to me as I reviewed 2015, which I’d come to regard as annus horribilis. I’d lost my main source of income as the publisher I worked for had his own problems. There was a mad scramble to survive financially.

True to form, I tackled the problem myself with only the occasional desperate arrow prayer. (I’m superstitious about praying for money.) Eventually things got so bad, I conceded that I could do with some Godly assistance. (A smidgeon off a grovel.)

Call it luck or a God-incidence, shortly afterwards I was commissioned by the Church of Sweden to edit a remarkable book. Called 'Behold I make all things new'. Its contributors present a compelling case for reinterpreting the Jewish, Christian and Muslim sacred texts with regard to homosexuality.

I’d lived through the reinterpretation of the Bible to prove that apartheid was not God’s will. I’d watched Anglican theologians reinterpret Scripture to allow women to be ordained into priesthood. I had seen the pain Christians inflict on God-loving homosexuals. In short, I jumped at the chance to edit that book.

Besides providing a welcome editing fee, it has proved a personal blessing and I can’t wait for it to be published. (I will keep you posted).

In January this year I finished my mystery novel. Far from holy, it is also in the publishing pipeline and is set in the Anglican Church. Its main character is Archbishop Sibonelo Shakespeare Khumalo (his mother was an English teacher) and some of you may have met him on his Facebook account.

Shakes has a lesbian daughter who expects him to live up to his promise to preside over her marriage service and a wife that reads the bible far more literally than he does. But his immediate challenge is that he needs to solve a couple of murders to stop a campaign to defrock him.

It’s meant to be a fun read. The God-incidence is that the writing of it has forced me to walk in the shoes of an Anglican archbishop who is torn between his personal life, current theology and the need to avoid schism.

Needless to say, I was so busy with both books that the ‘vocation thing’ lost priority. Besides, there are two other books in the pipeline, I manage three Facebooks accounts, two Twitter accounts, this blog, a LinkedIn account and I potter in Google+.

I’ve hit the pause button. Please pray for me as I try to discern if God has deftly recalled me into a vocation of communication or if I am just interpreting that ‘call in the night’ to suit myself.

Meanwhile, I am encouraged by Rabbi Meir Baal Hanes who says: ‘Any interpretation of scripture which leads to hatred or disdain of other people is illegitimate.’

In the same vein, Karen Armstrong, the moving spirit behind the worldwide launching of a Charter of Compassion in November 2009, has stated: ‘If your understanding of the divine made you kinder, more empathetic, and impelled you to express sympathy in concrete acts of loving-kindness, this was good theology. But if your notion of God made you unkind, belligerent, cruel, self-righteous, or if it led you to kill in God's name, it was bad theology.’

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.