Elegy for the light spectrum
Equality isn’t the main issue, at least for me. I’m not yearning this morning to be considered equal in status or law with my brother Christians, I’m not yearning for a place at the high table in the ecclesial banqueting hall, I’m not even yearning to wear episcopal claret with legitimacy, even though it is my very best colour. I know I am created in God’s image, fallen from grace, and a recipient of mercy – like the rest of you.
I’m aching for the fullness of light in church life. For the whole of the light spectrum to be displayed.
It’s the homogeneity that gets me down. At any Diocesan gathering, the voices from the front are bass and baritone and tenor, the voice modulation is minimal. The colours are Marks and Spencers conservative: grey, sombre blue, black (with a nod to bishop’s pink…). The composition of the speech is linear, formal, measured, controlled. Body language is restrained, facial expression graven. Attitudes are reasoned, earth-bound, cerebral. It makes me want to scream.
God created a spectrum of light: the light spectrum is surely a reflection of the infinitely variegated, inseparably combined, mind-melting glory of the Trinity.
I want the church to dance. I want it to move and sway, to cry and laugh, to gurn and grin and be mischievous. I want it to be colourful. I want it to be creative and whimsical, imaginative and expressive – I want it to be like a trembling hot-air balloon that breaks free from its moorings and runs wild on the wind.
I’m aware I’m generalising and I know some men in leadership model and promote and give permission for all the above. I am deeply grateful to you, my beloved. And I guess when people were making up their minds whether to vote ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ to women in the episcopate they may not have had runaway hot-air balloons in mind.
I value what men bring and have brought to the leadership of the church for the past 2000 years. But they are only half the spectrum of light. Which half, I’ll let you decide!
I want to go to Diocesan gatherings and watch the Bishop pick up her skirts and polka. I want her to wipe away tears as she speaks about national grief, I want her to wear a brilliant silk scarf as she addresses TV cameras. I want her to giggle with school children, to preach with the whole of her body, and talk about the life of faith in terms of pregnancy and birth and breast-feeding.
I know I’m generalising, and some women in leadership wouldn’t do any of the above. To be honest, I may just be talking about myself! But I’m sticking my neck out to say I think without more women in high profile roles the church will never be seen in full technicolour, and never represent in its body the immeasurable beauty of God.
So maybe this is it: maybe the coming years of waiting are for the next generation of potential women leaders to find the freedom to be bishops in a different way. A way that resurrects the greyed-out half of the rainbow.
Yup! God is probably busy with the poster paints now – and a wildly swinging paintbrush! x
so beautifully put and completely agree – thank you
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a lovely way of putting it
Thanks for looking in, Simon!
Me too.
Wonderful post Tina
Loved it – sounds like you’d find yourself a little more at ‘home’ here in Aotearoa (New Zealand) where we are gifted with the amazing Victoria Matthews in Christchurch, where I had breakfast the other day with the utterly mould breaking Justin Duckworth (dreadlocked bishop of Wellington) at his Christian commune (?) home at Ngatiawa (google Urban Vision) – and where her in the diocese of Dunedin the institutional church is at the point of collapse and Hope is beginning to flourish as we face a future unknown except for the presence of the Good Shepherd
OK, so I rhapsodise a bit – the Anglican church here does still carry many of the less healthy elements of its genetic roots 🙂 but there’s some rainbow stuff happening here too!
Blessings on Portishead! and your musings
Eric
BTW are you part of the setup that has Joanne Hustwick from Trinity with you??
Thanks for taking time to read and for encouragement from NZ! Brilliant to hear – I have a distant cousin, good friend of my Mum, in the Dunedin area and it’s lovely to know you are entering the void of disorder! Also thrilled to hear about the dreadlocked bishop – I felt a strong impulse yesterday to go out and get pierced, tattoed, and dyed in protest!
Haven’t come across Joanne yet….
Thanks Tina. Having met women who have been ordained bishop in other parts of the Anglican Communion, who exemplify just this – retired Bishop Kathryn of New York for one, I too long for us to experience that vibrancy-in-humanity here too.
Thank you Tina, as a priest serving under Justin Duckworth here in Wellington Diocese and with deep respect for Bishop Victoria as a remarkable leader through unimaginably terrible times in Christchurch, I endorse Eric’s views and hope and pray for the day soon when the C of E Synod will sort itself out and enable God’s Church to be seen in full technicolour.
Thank you for this stunning piece of writing…..
I ache about this….
Thanks for all you expressed in your article. It so said it all for me.
As someone in a denomination with women at all levels of ministry I know what a wonderful additional spectrum female leadership brings. Across the world male chauvinism uses religion as a justification for female oppression. The church may not force women to cover their faces in public or deny them the right to attend religious worship but preventing them from expressing their faith to the highest level within official ministry is, nevertheless, oppression.
I agree. Since being tiny I’ve been encouraged to think I could go as far and fly as high as my gifts would allow… At the age of 48 I woke up yesterday and found that was not longer true. The pain of that discovery surprises me. Which denomination are you a part of?
Hi Tina
I go to the Salvation Army. We’ve had women at the head of our church from the beginning and I believe we’ve been the richer for that. I’m sorry you feel that your wings have been clipped by the decision. But, as they say, when man closes one door, God opens another.
Thank you, that is uplifting and beautiful
Oh dear..Tina, 6 votes away from glorious technicolour and your master plan to take over the post christendom landscape and fiil it with light, will need to find a new expression (you new that anyway)..It,s another grey day for Anglicanism and the church..but we have alot of them here in the UK, usually on sunday mornings between 10am and 12pm.. so we are quite resilinent. However..don’t despair..much of what you desire to see and encounter is already exploading to life in our communities, cultures and relationships, beyond the reach of church management. The invitation to ‘come and see’ is alive and teeming with endless possibilites..enough to satisfy the deepest aching of your heart..we just need to be available to ‘dance’ along with them. The other alternative for Anglican women is to join the ‘dark side’ of Methodism and the dark arts of diaconal ministry..:)
I must say, the thought had crossed my mind to leap across and join you… Will give it thought 🙂
How inspiring! Thank you so much.
I am embarking on some research into church, Messy Church in particular. Your words have prompted me to reflect on the research process, in particular the data collection that I will do. How can I capture the colour and vitality of Messy Church without reducing it to (grey) words on a page? Can I use photography alongside questionnaires and interviews? If so, how do I even begin to analyse such data? Lots for me to think about!
Inspired! Who will join me to form a mixed-voice choir singing ‘colours of the wind’ at the opening session of the next Gen Synod?
I would if I were on General Synod! Thanks for reading…
I love this, especially the “want her to giggle with school children, to preach with the whole of her body, and talk about the life of faith in terms of pregnancy and birth and breast-feeding” bit…
Thank you for writing!
Can I join you in the dance – or should it be the ballon lift-off? Bless you for this.
Love to have you in the dance. Are you THE John Samways?!
This is why we need your voice in the CofE. Thankyou Tina, I’m off to check my male wardrobe and research more vivid shirts
That’s fab…Look forward to checking them out when we next meet!
Thank you for your post – I am another woman priest (Rochester Diocese) and also feeling immensely frustrated this week. Your post reminded me of a poem I wrote years ago, for a male priest friend of mine, who was longing to be able to break out of that “Marks and Spencers conservative” range of colours of clergy shirts, but conscious of the fact that male clergy tended to rib mercilessly anyone who turned up for meetings in anything other than the standard black, grey or blue. Of course it was about far more than simply what he wore – permission to be the colourful person he really was, I suppose. Many male clergy have told me of the difference it has made to them, freeing them up, to have women priests in their midst. Anyway, I recalled the poem I wrote for him, and thought you might like it…
THE PEACOCK TAKES HIS PLACE IN HEAVEN
In India the gods ride on a peacock’s back,
and yet outside the gates of Heaven he waited,
unconvinced that here within these shining barricades
there was a place where he might find a home.
He watched the other birds
– drab greys and sober browns –
settle smugly in the mustard tree,
spreading out their wings.
No room for peacocks there.
But God had seen him hiding just beyond the wall,
and wept,
and went outside.
“Come in. What better place for you than here?
Come in.
Who made your plumage, who, your crested head?
Who practised blue and green and purple on your silky tail?
Come in. For who but I created you to tell the solemn world
that heaven does not happen only here behind these jewelled walls
but everywhere you spread your God-reflecting feathers.”
Slowly, with a wary hope,
the peacock lifted up his head
and looked into the iridescent eyes of God
“Climb on my back, “the peacock softly cried,
“we’ll go together through these gates,
and I shall be a fitting bearer for the King of kings.”
Anne Le Bas. 4th Dec 97
(In Hindu belief one of the sons of Shiva, Kumari – also known as Skanda – who is the God of war, rides on a peacock.)
Thanks very much for sharing! Wonderful.
Tina, many thanks for your beautifully crafted piece, an exquisite example of the intuitive, empathetic, creative approach we discussed under Pink’s ‘conceptual age’. May the day come soon when we have the full rainbow spectrum in God’s Church!