Adventure: Chapter 4 - Backstory

Tonight I remembered Millington. My childhood home in New Jersey. I'm two or three years old. Three, I think, because my oldest brother is with me and we are both walking and he's one year, 29 days, three hours and 63 minutes younger than I am.

We've run away from home. I can see both of us as though we are in a photograph - two little tow-heads walking through a field somewhere at the end of River Road.


Of course, there is no photograph. And we didn't run away. We got lost. I imagine the photograph I remember was the impression of those who found us and brought us home. "Imagine that, two little tow heads sticking up just over the tops of the weeds and tall grasses! If it wasn't for that hair, I doubt we'd have seen them!"


I was the oldest of five, and the only girl. Over time my mother would go back to work. She worked in a bank. My father worked for a motorboat engine company. There are pictures of him in an old, wood racing boat on the Hudson. He was in a TV ad for Timex watches. He was the representative on camera for the outboard motor company that provided the motor to which a Timex was strapped and then immersed in the water and the engine started up. At the end the watch was brought up, detached and the announcer said, "It takes a licking and keeps on ticking!"

My father told us later, when we saw the commercial on television, that the watch was destroyed. The commercial was a fake. A new watch was substituted in this supposedly "live" demonstration. But we got to see our handsome dad on television!

My mother was the religious one. She was a Baptist. Northern Baptist. The first four of us children were not baptized until mother became an Episcopalian. Instead, we were dedicated in the Baptist church.

That's a leap, in those days, for a Baptist to become an Episcopalian. It was like this. The only Baptist church in town was Southern Baptist. Mother stuck it out until I was six. She told us she was sending us to the Episcopalian church where one of our friends, David, went to Sunday school. My oldest brother and I joined the children's choir. We sang at the family service. I learned to sing alto.

My mother and father followed us children into the Episcopal church. My father was Christian Scientist, lapsed. My mother settled into the Episcopal church in Millington because it was more like the Northern Baptist church she'd been brought up in, than the Southern Baptist church she'd been going to.

My parents sang in the adult choir. My mother was a soprano - a fine, lyric soprano I learned much later. My parents went to the late service at 10, while we children were in Sunday school.

I was eight when I and my three brothers were baptized at the same time after a Sunday service of Morning Prayer. The youngest was baptized as an infant two years later. When he was born my mother was stumped for a name. The minister (we didn't call Episcopalian clergy "priest" or "father" at that church) said all the rest of us were named from the Bible. Why not the fifth? She said, well, yes, the boys, but not the girl. And he directed her to the Second Letter of Paul to Timothy - Lois, a godly woman, mother of Eunice, grandmother of Timothy.

Almost thirty years later, I told my mother I wanted to become a priest in the Episcopal church. She wasn't exactly delighted. She looked confused. Just as she had been confused when I went to college. She had assumed I'd go to a secretarial school and work in an office. She had hoped my brothers would go to college, but it never occurred to her that  her daughter would.

Now, here I was, married for the second time, and telling her I want to be a priest. She looked away and said, "When I was pregnant I told God I would dedicate my firstborn to the ministry. It never occurred to me my firstborn would be a girl, and I thought God understood that I meant firstborn boy." My mother did not live to see me go off to seminary. My father did not live to see me graduate and be ordained.

My godmother did, however. I hadn't heard from her in decades. She had been my mother's best friend. My middle name was her middle name. I sent her an invitation in Florida. When I was distributing the bread for the first time, there was Aunt Dorothy! She was beaming. She was so proud. She wanted only to receive communion from my hand. And I was so glad to have someone from among the adults who reared me to be there and witness that day.

This is how I remember. I know from the story of those two tow-headed children that memory is a strange thing. I do know this: I believe I was born to be an Episcopalian. I took to Episcopalian Christianity like the proverbial duck to water. None of my brothers stuck to it. And here I am, a priest.

My models were that Episcopal minister in Millington, Mr. Rath (yes, Mr., not Father!) and Father Moon in Delaware. One low church, the other high church. I'm a mix of both. I got to tell both of them before they each died. Neither survived until my ordination. I'm not sure either of them approved.

My image of priesthood was nurtured in a way of being church that is passing away. The vision that drew me to ordination was one for the church that is becoming. Again, I am a mix of both. For the church institution into which I was ordained, parish ministry was the norm. Now, a priesthood of men and women who are full time with benefits is in jeopardy. Not many congregations can afford full time plus benefits anymore. Some dioceses are expecting their clergy to be bi-vocational, worker or tentmaker priests. We were not prepared for that. And I think seminaries may be lagging behind in reshaping their formational experience for clergy to prepare them for this reality.

Two months ago, the proposition of remaking my own exercise of priestly ministry was daunting. I had ideas but I had no confidence I could manage it all. Today, there is a difference in me. Those two little tow-headed children were not lost. They were on an adventure. And I am not lost. I am still on that adventure on which I embarked so long ago. I don't have all the pieces and I don't need them all to begin. And I have begun. Now one can only pray that the institution is ready for a priesthood that does not fit expectations.