Dear Five O' Clock Friends,
There we were--a room full of women clergy--priests and deacons in the Diocese of the Rio Grande. Speaking to us was the Rt. Rev. Barbara Harris, the first woman to be ordained a bishop in the Episcopal Church and in the world-wide Anglican communion.
There we were--a room full of women clergy--priests and deacons in the Diocese of the Rio Grande. Speaking to us was the Rt. Rev. Barbara Harris, the first woman to be ordained a bishop in the Episcopal Church and in the world-wide Anglican communion.
She told her story and she told the stories of those who had gone before her. The stories of the women on whose shoulders she stood. She started with the Philadelphia Eleven--the women who braved the wrath of the establishment as they followed God's call to them and were ordained to the priesthood in 1974.
(It wasn't until 1976 that the Episcopal Church removed all the barriers to women's ordination.) And even at the turn of this century there were still a few dioceses in our church. But Bishop Harris turned our gaze back beyond those ordinations in 1974. She wanted us to look at the roots of our ordinations--roots that extended way back to the 19th century when women were first allowed to be deaconesses.
As I listened to Bishop Harris, I was reminded of another woman priest--the Rev. Florence Li-Tim Oi. Florence Li-Tim Oi was ordained to the priesthood in 1944 in the midst of World War II. When the war ended, the Archbishop of Canterbury got wind of her ordination and wanted her to renounce her Holy Orders. She refused. But was allowed to serve as priest again until 1984 when she moved to Canada.
Gathered together in the Bosque Center dining room were women clergy of the Diocese of the Rio Grande. As I listened to my colleagues share a little of their journeys to that room, I thought about the shoulders on which we all stand--the shoulders of those who have gone before us in the living of our faith. That line of shoulders goes way back--back to our beginnings. That line of shoulders begins with the men and women who served Jesus and who served with him as well. It's a line that doesn't end. You and I are shoulders to those who follow us. Our work is to live into God's call to us--as individuals and as the community of Live at Five. When we live into God's call, we become the shoulders others stand upon in their living out God's call to them.
In gratitude for the shoulders on which we stand,
Susan+
Lead Priest, Live at Five
sahcdsp@yahoo.com
505-842-1607
RSS Feed
