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.
Dear Rev Alison and the congregation of St Lawrence's,Thank you so much for your very generous donations of food which will be of great benefit to our friends. I am attaching a certificate of appreciation which you might like to display on your church notice board.As you will be aware this year is particularly difficult for everyone and especially the vulnerable in our society. The cost of living crisis is proving to be very challenging. Our work continues to expand as we try to help more and more people who may have just about managed in the past but are now starting to struggle.Each month we email out a House of Bread Newsletter. This is a great way of keeping up to date with what we are up to, any new initiatives you might be interested in and has details of fundraising events that you might like to support. Please let us know if you would like to be included in this.If you would like to donate either as a one-off or on a monthly basis please have a look at the local-giving link at the bottom of the page.Would you, or any of your friends or family be interested in volunteering with us? We have a number of different ways in which you could help. You might help to prepare and serve food in Cafe 43, you could be involved in putting food bags together at our Food Bank unit on Beaconside, we have a tin collection team who collect and distribute our Charity Money collection boxes, or, if you are only available at weekends, then our pop-up cafe held at Church Lane Church, Stafford on the second Saturday of each month. Please get in touch with us if you’d like further information or an informal chat about how we could work together.Once again thank you for thinking of The House of Bread.With very best wishes,Judy PalmerAdministrator