Twenty years on – gratitude and hope

Five years ago today, I wrote a blog-post to mark the fifteenth anniversary of my ordination to the priesthood. I was still pretty new to blogging and this seemed to me a good opportunity to capture some of the memories of that eventful and historic time and tell a story which deserves to be remembered. 

This year the Church in Wales decided to mark the twentieth anniversary of these first ordinations with simultaneous services in all six Welsh cathedrals. We live at the very southern tip of Bangor Diocese, so on Saturday morning DH and I set off bright and early to drive the 85 miles to our cathedral. Normally we would have revelled in the glorious scenery through which we were travelling, but sadly that morning it was almost completely shrouded in thick Welsh mist. Nevertheless we arrived in good time and at 11am the service began.

Of the original nine ordained in Bangor all those years ago, only I and three others were able to be there. One had died, one was ill, and two had moved out of the diocese, while the last was unavoidably absent. However we were strongly supported by the presence of many of the women ordained in the diocese since that momentous first ordination and we rejoiced in the fact that the new Dean of the cathedral, who presided at the Eucharist, was one of the original nine ordained in 1997.

Our bishop relinquished his normal position to act as deacon to the women who led the service and our preacher was an old friend from the campaigning days of the mid 1990s, who gave us a sermon by turns thoughtful, inspiring and amusing. The cathedral choir sang sublimely as always and the proceedings were filmed by BBC Wales who had also covered the service twenty years ago. As we met up with old friends after the service and exchanged reminiscences, it was hard to believe so many years had passed.

The following day I led the service at the same church where I had celebrated Holy Communion for the first time 20 years before and, thankfully, still with many of the same faces in the congregation. Now, as I reflect on the past weekend and the twenty years since the events it commemorated, I am filled with gratitude for the people I have known, the work I have been enabled to do and the deep enjoyment and satisfaction it has given me. And as I look forward to the consecration next week of the first woman to be elected bishop in the Church in Wales, I am filled with hope and encouragement for the future. Gratitude and hope – who could wish for more?

A memory of 20 years ago

Being welcomed by the Dean - one of us

Listening intently to the sermon

Celebrating the Eucharist together, led by the Dean - and yes, it's still the Christmas season.

The final procession - cathedrals love processions!

Together with our preacher, second from left

The Famous Four

Time is the strangest thing

It was just like old times. This morning, as I walked from the vestry to the front of the church and turned to face the congregation, thirteen years of my life seemed to vanish and I was back in the last days of my curacy, just before I left to become vicar of three neighbouring parishes.

An awful lot has happened in my life since then – two more grandsons, another move to a group of parishes in England, my second cancer diagnosis and finally retirement and the move back to Wales – but just at that moment it was as though all of that had never happened.

But of course it wasn’t just like old times. Faces I had known well were missing and new faces had taken their place. Like me, the people I still know are older and greyer and probably just as creaky. Yet none of that mattered as we went through the service together and talked nineteen to the dozen over coffee afterwards. Until their new vicar is appointed, I’ll be helping out from time to time at this church, so time will probably play more tricks on me.

Time can be so elastic, sometimes snapping back to hide the intervening years, yet in other circumstances it can stretch out endlessly, making a day or even an hour feel like an eternity. Sometimes we have too much of it and at others not enough, and I’ve certainly been experiencing a new shortage of time as I find myself wanting to fit music practice at least once into every day.

The trouble is I’m hooked. I really, really want to learn to play the clarinet, so I’m starting to rearrange other things to make time for regular practice, even finding my blog-reading and writing time being eaten into. I need time to do its stretching trick, so that I can have enough for everything. However, I doubt time will be so accommodating, so I’ll just have to make better use of the normal daily allowance. If DD, with all her work and family commitments can do it, surely I, a retired woman of leisure, can manage it. From now on my new motto had better be ‘Seize the day’.

Images via Google

A silver anniversary

After a lovely weekend with family, we finally arrived just after midnight and fell into bed. Today we evicted the spiders that always take up residence in our absence and have just finished unpacking. Giving thanks for the fact that the weather is dry, if rather cool, I've even made a start on trying to turn the hayfield that greeted us back into something vaguely resembling a lawn. Now we are both tired and ready for bed, but before I go, I can’t let this day end without mentioning that it has a very particular significance for me.

Twenty-five years ago, on Saturday June 25^th 1988, I was ordained deacon, together with five others, by the then Bishop of Bangor. For me it was the culmination of a long process of discernment and part-time training, alongside my full-time work as a public librarian, and it was an extraordinarily happy and enjoyable day. It wasn't a historic occasion like my later ordination to the priesthood. Instead it was a family occasion, as our families, friends and church congregations came together to celebrate this new stage in all our lives. 

I have no photos of the ordination service itself, nor any formal posed portraits. What I have is a series of snapshots which I think give a good flavour of the happiness that permeated the crowd outside the cathedral west door after the service.  Twenty-five years on, I’m still profoundly grateful for that day and for the joys and satisfaction of the work it made possible for me. It has been sheer privilege. 

With our two children, who put up with a lot during my training

With my next-to-youngest sister, then and always a great support.

And with my dear Baby Sis. Why do big sisters always have to hold forth?

With DH, without whom I'd never have done any of it.

You've heard of Flying Bishops. Meet the flying deacon....

All the images have been scanned from the hard copy originals of those long-ago pre-digital days.

There are some days you can’t forget…

 …and April 29^th is one of those for me. Incredible as it may seem, it was 45 years ago today that my 22 year-old self and my stripling of a fiancé (a mere 21 year-old) tied the knot in the smallest wedding ceremony it is legally possible to have. Four and a half decades, two children, and three grandsons later, despite being considerably older, fatter and greyer, we are happier and more in love than ever and I still think I must be the luckiest woman alive.

As I type this, DH is sitting downstairs after one of his favourite meals, happily engrossed in his beloved snooker (the World Championship has just entered its second week). Meanwhile I’m comfortably ensconced at my desk with a glass of rather nice French rosé, thinking back over the years and realising that, with all its ups and downs, I wouldn't have had our life together any other way.

But today isn't simply our wedding anniversary. Eleven years ago today I had just reached the end of the first year of my second career as a parish priest. DH and I had temporarily exchanged our Welsh farmhouse for an Edwardian vicarage and I was busier than I think I have ever been in my life, before or since. Not only was my diary (which I have open in front of me as a reminder) crammed with pastoral visits, parish meetings and other appointments, but we had our eldest grandson staying with us while his mother prepared for the birth of her second child.

On the evening of the 29^th I had two successive meetings at the vicarage and DH was left to put Grandson#1 to bed, while I tried to concentrate on parish affairs, knowing all the while that DD was in labour. Finally, at 9.30, the last member of the parochial church council said goodnight and I was free to discover whether I had become a grandmother again. You can imagine my jubilation on discovering that, while I was busy discussing the minutiae of parish finances, Grandson#2 had indeed made his entrance into the world and Grandson#1 had become an older brother. 

Eleven years on, Grandson#2 is in his last term at primary school and looking forward eagerly to the adventure of starting secondary school after the summer holidays. Those years have flown, as did the thirty-four which preceded them, yet I can still remember every detail of that quiet, happy and rain-sodden April day when DH and I said ‘I do’.

Making history

Today I and some sixty other women, throughout Wales and beyond, are marking a very special anniversary. Fifteen years ago today, on January 11th 1997, we became the first women to be ordained to the priesthood in the Anglican Church in Wales. In the six cathedrals of Wales every seat was taken, as our families and congregations packed the pews to witness this solemn, historic, and profoundly joyful occasion.

My ordination took place in Bangor Cathedral, in the north-west corner of Wales, on a grey and wintry Saturday just after Epiphany. My entire family had made immense efforts to be there, with DH and our two children, my four sisters, DH’s two brothers, my mother-in-law, and as many assorted partners and children as could make it, coming from all over the UK to support me and rejoice with me. By my reckoning there were 24 of us around the restaurant table for the celebration lunch after the service! In addition, an entire coach-load of local friends and parishioners had travelled almost 100 miles along slow and winding Welsh roads to be there too.

The Famous Five

That service, and the new ministry which it opened for me and my female colleagues, was the culmination of a long and, at times, very painful process. The Church in Wales had been the pioneer of the ordained ministry of women in the Anglican Church in Great Britain, having ordained women as deacons as early as 1980. Sadly, that pioneer spirit seemed to have been lost over the years, and on April 6th 1994, only weeks after the first women had been ordained to the priesthood in the Church of England, the Bill to ordain women to the priesthood in Wales was defeated in the Church’s Governing Body by a narrow margin in the House of Clergy, having been passed overwhelmingly by the laity and unanimously by the Bishops.

What no-one could have foreseen was the upset this would cause throughout Wales, both inside the church and far beyond. It was headline news for days on Welsh TV and radio and in Welsh newspapers. Letters of protest poured in to the Bishops’ offices. Within a couple of weeks a meeting was held in my own parish in Mid-Wales, at which Anglicans from all over Wales decided to set up a campaigning organisation called Women Priests for Wales, of which I somehow found myself the Secretary! Things moved rapidly after that, and only a couple of weeks later I was being interviewed live by Jenni Murray on the BBC radio programme Woman’s Hour.

This was the beginning of two and a half years of very hard work, over and above my full-time work as a librarian and my parish responsibilities. Meetings were held and a petition organised, which garnered thousands of signatures and was presented to the Bishops. People (lay and clergy) joined, wore badges, wrote letters and produced publications, raised funds, held vigils and services and prayed hard, and simply refused to let the issue fade into obscurity.

Supporters of the campaign (including me) stood for election to the Church’s Governing Body and took part in its debates for the next few years. Finally, on September 19th 1996 (the date is engraved on my heart) the reintroduced Bill to allow the ordination of women to the priesthood passed its third and final reading in all three houses and the way was finally open.

By the time I and my eight fellow deacons (our ages ranging from 27 to 68) entered Bangor Cathedral on that historic morning, we had been waiting for that day for between 2 and 14 years. In my case I was 50 and had been a deacon for eight and a half years. Now, at last, the vocation we had all been aware of for so long was to be fulfilled and I cannot find the words to describe just how that felt. Perhaps the expressions on our faces in the photographs taken during and after the service say it all for us, without the need for words.

As if the ordination day itself were not gift enough, the next day found us all back in our home parishes, presiding for the first time at the church’s central service, the Eucharist or Holy Communion. My vicar had cancelled the other morning services, so that my first Eucharist could be a joint celebration for the congregations from both our churches. The church was full and the atmosphere almost electric with excitement and joy. I had been allowed to chose the hymns and songs, and the vicar, vested that day as a deacon to assist me, as I for so long had assisted him, preached for me.

It sounds like the most hackneyed of clichés, but I truly can remember just about every detail of that morning, even to the butterflies in my stomach as I sang the priest’s part of the service for the very first time. There were so many communicants that administering communion took much longer than usual, and the music group had time to sing all the songs I had so happily chosen.

After the service came the photographs and then the party in the adjacent church hall. A parishioner who is a gifted cake-maker had made and decorated the most beautiful ordination cake, and cake and wine circulated merrily for some time, amid animated conversation and much laughter.

Then, for me, came the crowning moment when my broadly-smiling vicar presented me with the beautiful silver home-communion set which was the parishes’ gift to me to mark the occasion. It has had much use over the years since then and I treasure it still, both as a reminder of an unforgettable weekend and as a tangible sign of the loving friendship which supported and encouraged me though all the years of my ministry in those parishes. It is the most immense privilege to be a priest, and I thank God for that privilege and the deep and abiding joy it has brought me. 

This post is dedicated to the memory of Alistair (died November 2011) good friend and staunch supporter of the ordination of women, who sat next to me throughout that crucial debate and unprotestingly allowed me to crush his fingers, as we waited on tenterhooks for the result of the vote.

Like pearls on a thread

A couple of weeks ago I walked to church on a bright, sunny, Sunday morning, along a road with perhaps one of the most beautiful views in Britain. As I did so, I found myself thinking back over the different churches which have played such an important part in my life since childhood.

In one of my earliest posts I wrote about the way in which living among hills has been a constant thread in my life. Alongside that thread runs another, made up of a variety of usually old, often beautiful, and sometimes spectacularly-set buildings, which have found their way into my heart.



Tockholes URC chapel

The thread begins for me with a small, plain, Congregational chapel in the little village in which I spent most of my childhood. The building itself is not particularly old, but its past is historic. It stands on the site of one of the first Nonconformist chapels, founded in 1662 when the Act of Uniformity of that year led to the expulsion from the Church of England of over 2000 clergy, who refused to comply with the compulsory use of the Book of Common Prayer in public worship. My memories of childhood are inextricably linked with this austere little building and my mother’s parents are both buried in its churchyard.



St Michael's Church, Trefeglwys

The next pearl was added to the thread in Mid-Wales, where at the age of 30, after having moved completely away from church-going in my late teens, I was confirmed into the Anglican Church. The story of how I came to this life-changing decision is told here. The parish church I began to attend was a mid C19th rebuilding of a C12th original, and a little research among the local history collection in the library in which I worked turned up the fact that until the Reformation it had belonged to Haughmond Abbey in Shropshire. It is right in the centre of the village and one day, to complete the circle, I shall be buried in its large and lovely churchyard, where in the past, as its Vicar, I myself conducted many burials.

Saint Idloes Church, Llanidloes

Twelve years later came another pearl, when I was ordained deacon and became a part-time, unpaid curate at the parish church in our local market town of Llanidloes, while still carrying on with my work as a librarian. If I had to choose which of the many churches I have known and loved is the most important to me, it would have to be Saint Idloes. It was the church where my vocation to ministry was nurtured and found expression. It was also the church where I had the joy of conducting the marriage of DD and her husband. It stands almost on the banks of the River Severn and is both beautiful and historic, and I love every stone of it.

Saint Llonio's Church, Llandinam

After thirteen happy years here I travelled downstream to another lovely village, when I went into full-time ministry and was appointed Vicar of three small country parishes, including the one where I had been confirmed. DH and I moved into the Vicarage, from where we could look across at the spur of land on which the parish church stands, high above the Severn in its cradle of hills. I have worshipped in many churches, but this is the only one where I have had to stop halfway up the steep path to catch my breath, only to have it taken away again when I turned round to look at the view. My third church was a tiny, simple building in a small hamlet, where the old rectory was probably bigger than the church itself, but where the equally tiny congregation was loyal and enthusiastic.

Saint Gwrhai's Church, Penstrowed.

St Michael and All Angels, Fringford

My subsequent move to a group of parishes in Oxford Diocese brought a complete change of scenery and a new historic link, not with a monastery or a Celtic saint or two, but with a writer whose work recently found great popularity, when it was dramatised for TV. For three years DH and I lived in Fringford, immortalised as Candleford Green by the locally-born author Flora Thompson, whose memories of her childhood in late 19th century rural Oxfordshire were captured so beautifully in her trilogy Lark Rise to Candleford.

Since my retirement four years ago, we have been back in Mid-Wales, where I can again worship in the local churches which have played such an important role in my life. When in Scotland I worship at the parish church in Tongue, where the view from the church gate encompasses both mountains and water, or sometimes at the little church overlooking the sea at Melness, one of the most northerly, still-used, church buildings in mainland Britain. In France I often attend the local RC church in the village on the hill above our cottage, a church which, like many in the area, had to be rebuilt after being totally destroyed in World War Two.  History again, but of a very different kind. 

St Andrew's Church, Tongue

Melness Church

The church at Juvigny-le-Tertre

So many churches, so many pearls on the thread of my life.

Have cassock, will travel

When I was first ordained deacon twenty-three years ago, I would never have guessed how life was going to open up before me. I was still working full-time as a librarian back then and my work as an unpaid curate had to be fitted into the gaps. Fast forward almost nine years to my longed-for and long-worked-for ordination to the priesthood in January 1997 and my life was about to take another unexpected turn.

Within a fortnight of that unforgettable day, I had been asked to consider, and had accepted, the offer of voluntary redundancy and early retirement from my post as Area Librarian. Six months later I was officiating at DD’s wedding as a lady of leisure, but that happy state of affairs wasn’t destined to last very long. First I was asked to take on a diocesan responsibility (part-time and unpaid) and a couple of years later, after my first cancer diagnosis and treatment, I finally went into full-time parish ministry and became a vicar.

Six very happy years and two parish posts later, my second encounter with cancer led to my second attempt at retirement and this one finally succeeded. DH and I came back to our house in the hills of Mid-Wales and gradually settled into our unusual roving retirement. However, this doesn’t mean that I have hung up my cassock completely and when asked I still enjoy filling in when local clergy are on holiday. What I could never have anticipated was that being asked to provide cover when a priest needs a holiday might involve me too in packing a suitcase and flying off to foreign climes.

Saint Clement's Church

But that is exactly what has happened, thanks to my former rector and colleague in my final post being appointed as Anglican Chaplain to the English-speaking congregation based at Saint Clement's Church in Prague. His name is Ricky Yates and he writes a very interesting and informative blog about Prague itself and his life and experiences as chaplain there.  He and his wife also like to go on holiday from time to time, and last autumn I was lucky enough to be asked to act as his locum chaplain for two wonderful weeks. I thoroughly enjoyed meeting his amazingly international (and interdenominational) congregation and almost wore my shoes out exploring Prague on foot in my spare time.

Before I came home last year, we arranged that I would return this autumn for another stint as locum chaplain, which is why, next Thursday, I will be flying to Prague, this time for three Sundays. As you can imagine, I’m looking forward to it enormously. Since we got back from Normandy last week, I’ve been busy unpacking and getting the house sorted out.  On top of this I’ve also been up to my eyes in preparation for the work I will be doing as chaplain, hence the continuing absence of new posts for those of you who faithfully pop in to see whether I’ve got round to updating my blog. J

Sadly, I won’t be able to blog properly from Prague, or at least not with photos, but I can promise you more than a glimpse of this most beautiful of cities once I’m safely back in Wales. Saint Francis and Assisi haven’t been forgotten either and will have their turn, now that the beguilingly long, light evenings of summer are only a memory and autumn is truly here.

Prague riverbank

Saint Vitus' Cathedral

Vltava River