Last month our son celebrated his 30th birthday. Among countless memories of that time is a landmark event that took place a few days later. Still in the Maternity Hospital, I watched the first group of women deacons being ordained to the priesthood in the Church of England in a service broadcast live from Bristol Cathedral. Similar services took place in every Cathedral in England in the following months. Many of the first women priests had served as ministers in the Church of England for decades, encountering rejection and negotiating obstacles along the way. As deaconesses they had been given charge of churches but were limited in the role they could play. When in 1987 the first women were ordained deacon, they could marry couples but could not preside at Holy Communion. 12 March 1994 was a day of mixed emotions. For me and countless others it was a day of joy and celebration, a historic moment in the long journey towards women’s ordination. The journey continued until the first woman bishop was consecrated at York Minster in January 2015. For many, though, the day stirred up feelings of anger and betrayal. There were protests and defiant gestures. The bells of a nearby Anglican church rang out a funeral dirge. My journey? Ordained deacon in July 1990, I joined 1000-1200 women called to serve God in the Church and the wider community through pastoral care, preaching and assisting with worship. The men were ordained priest after a year as deacons. Peter, ordained deacon in June 1991 a few months after we married, was ordained priest in 1992. Like most women deacons I longed for women be ordained to the priesthood. Yet I was eager to live out my calling to the full while remaining a deacon. What though did women’s ministry look like? How was I to apply my bundle of gifts and abilities, personality and experience to the role of ‘lady deacon’? In my years of worshipping in Anglican churches I had never come across a deaconess or woman reader. Likewise, people I met had never set eyes on a woman in a clerical collar before or seen a woman minister in action. The challenge was to be myself and get on with the job. Like other woman deacons I encountered people who had hesitations about accepting my ministry. Most were pleasantly surprised by the experience, though some refused to have me minister to them on the grounds that I was female. Since 1994 women in ministry have become a familiar sight, not only in church and community life but also in the world of television and radio. No programme has done more to raise the profile of women clergy than the Vicar of Dibley, starring Dawn French, which first screened in November 1994. When in 2006 more women than men were ordained as clergy in the Church of England it was suggested that the continued popularity of The Vicar of Dibley could have encouraged women who already had a sense of calling. For me, the call to ministry and priesthood remains a momentous gift from the God of surprises, a privilege and a joy. The world and the church have changed a lot in 30 years, but I continue to trust that God is at work even in situations – in our families, our country, our world – that seem hopeless and out of control. The call remains to love and serve all of God’s children. To be myself and get on with the job. Revd Cathy Dakin
In Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Centre in Jerusalem, under the floor in one of the rooms, visible through glass panels, is a pile of leather shoes, just a few of the 12 million shoes worn by those entering the gas chambers. There the shoes are now preserved in the dilapidated, worn-out state they were in when they were carefully put down by those who either thought they were going to have a shower or knew they were not. We all wear shoes and have done since the ancient Egyptians and countless civilisations before them, made primitive sandals. Shoes unite us with all humankind, past, present and future because everyone wears shoes if they can and no one can fail to be moved by the sight of the pile of discarded shoes. They are part of and witness to one of the darkest periods of human history. When the camp guards told the gas chamber victims to remove their shoes, they never dreamt that their inhuman task would yield the opposite effect and that those same shoes would end up viewed by millions as a symbol not only of how bad we have been but also of how good we can be. Those shoes lying there, as a mournful testimony to their wearers are also objects of hope. All shoes are objects of hope because they speak to us about journeys made and journeys yet to be taken. Shoes carry us forward; as the song says, they are made for walking. The Holocaust shoes carried their wearers to a miserable end but an end that will never be forgotten and which, in the years that have followed, has made those shoes haunt our consciences. For they say to us, ‘Do not walk this way; do not take the path of hate and horror.’ To those who perpetrate horror and terror today, those Holocaust shoes have a message: even if all that is left after the outrage is a pile of shoes, those shoes were made for walking and humanity will walk on, in spite of everything and because of everything. We are called in Christ to fight the good fight and run, or walk, the race of faith; this gives us hope, as well as warning, for we always look to the future, knowing we will be judged by the future. We also walk in the shoes of our predecessors: those who ran the race, fought the good fight and have received their reward. Whatever path we walk, in whatever shoes, it is hopefully a long walk and it is a walk that has a beginning and an end. No one else can walk it for us; they can lend or buy us shoes and give us a map but in the end we walk the paths ahead of us with all the turns, dead ends, hills and slopes that life puts in our way. The apostle Paul talks of running a race and fighting a good fight. Both are metaphors for the journey, the pilgrimage, the linear progression from the day we were born to the day we die. Most people take an average of around 7,500 steps a day. This means that if they live to 80 years old, they will have taken about 216,262,500 steps in their lifetime. The same average person with the average stride will have walked approximately 110,000 miles, which is the equivalent of walking more than five times around the earth’s equator or almost half way to the moon. We walk almost all those miles in shoes and apparently the average person owns 20 pairs of shoes at any one time. Yet we are born with bare feet and we die with bare feet. Shoes are only for the journey. Between the font and the grave, we wear shoes to carry us on our pilgrimage race, knowing that at the end we shall bare both our soles and our souls before our Lord, the righteous judge. Lent is a time to remember this inevitable finishing line and gives us an annual opportunity to walk the course. Each lent is a lifetime in miniature. We begin by recognising our frailty and our sinful nature, which we proceed to regret and repent of. Then, as we journey through the 40 days and nights, we resolve to repair our lives with the help of God, so that we may be renewed and at the end reach the goal of resurrection life. The journey through lent is a spiritual walk-through of the greater life we have, which itself carries us forward in hope to the eternal resurrection life we are promised in Jesus Christ. Next time you select a pair of shoes to wear, think how far they will travel and why.
The Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. (John 1: 14) Wednesday 14th February this year marks not only Valentine’s Day, but also Ash Wednesday, two events that are not naturally connected or associated with each other, except this year when they share a date. Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent, a period of 40 days that is traditionally a time of self-denial, repentance and spiritual discipline as we prepare to greet the Risen Christ on Easter Morning. Valentine’s Day is thought to have started around 500 AD drawing on stories of a priest named Valentine, who was imprisoned by the Emperor Claudius for his faith, but sent a love letter to the jailer’s daughter just before his death. For his work with persecuted Christians he was subsequently made a saint and two hundred years later the tradition of sending cards to a loved one on St Valentine’s Day began. Five hundred years earlier, God sent a love letter to the world in the form of His Son, Jesus, ‘the Word made flesh’, who lived among us. The Bible is full of the language of love, hope and the fulfilment of promises. We learn of a God who invites us to return to Him again and again, even when we have been unfaithful and turned away from His loving kindness. God always has his arms open wide, ready to welcome us into His embrace, arms that opened wide on the cross as His Son Jesus Christ was crucified for all that separated humanity from God. Valentine, as a Christian festival, captures something of the essence of God’s love, and Ash Wednesday is a call to return to our God who is abounding in love. Not usually celebrated or recognised together, but the words of Christina Rossetti’s poem penned on 14 February 1883 gives an expression of how death and love are entwined together: A world of change & loss, a world of death, Of heart & eyes that fail, of labouring breath, Of pains to bear & painful deeds to do:— Nevertheless a world of life to come And love; where you’re at home, while in our home Your Valentine rejoices having you. On Ash Wednesday, we gather in Church to be signed with a cross, using ashes from burning last year’s palm crosses, with the words ‘Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.’ Words that are also echoed in a funeral service, ‘ashes to ashes, dust to dust’. It’s a reminder that, in our humanity, as we stand before God, each one of us is equal in His eyes. Our worldly lives are limited, but Christ is our hope of life and love that far exceeds that which humans can bestow on one another, a life that is eternal, under the gaze of a God who personified love in the person of Jesus. God loves us unconditionally and waits patiently for His love letter to us to be reciprocated, asking of us simply that we open our hearts to Him, so that he can welcome us home into His heart. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. (John 3: 16) Revd Alison, Rector
