\n
For the past 24 hours I have been attending a clergy conference. It\u2019s a wonderful opportunity afforded to the clergy of our diocese by our Bishop to get away from it all in a spectacularly holy place called Christ the King Spiritual Life Center in Greenwich, NY. This is an annual event, which I have attended many times during my ministry in the Diocese of Albany. It is really a gift to the clergy as the Bishop not only makes it affordable, even free if you really can\u2019t afford it, he provides a quality speaker and his own gentle presence and spirituality. We have been fortunate to have people from all over the world come and share their spiritual wisdom and God\u2019s message of love and hope for his ministers. This year, Bishop Santosh Marray, Assisting Bishop of the Diocese of East Carolina has been our retreat leader and what a gift!<\/p>\n
He started out talking about \u201cstretch marks,\u201d which had everyone, including our Bishop, wondering at the wisdom of bringing this guy in to talk to us. But he quickly put our minds and hearts at ease when he explained that most of what we go through in life causes our spiritual stretch marks, the sign that God is stretching us to learn and grow in some kind of new way or direction. He told us how God had stretched him by sending him to a diocese which had spent the money that had been set aside to build a new church for his congregation. He described how God had stretched him by teaching him to wait while he dealt with the difficult people in his ministry.<\/p>\n
This morning he began his message by talking about what we call God. He talked about how the people of the 1st<\/sup> Century didn\u2019t really call God \u201cthe Father\u201d because they had grown up with the image of Abraham as the Father of God\u2019s chosen people. For him, the word that Jesus used to talk about his Father in heaven was what worked for him \u2013 \u201cAbba.\u201d That\u2019s an Aramaic word that is pretty much untranslatable but is best rendered as \u201cDaddy.\u201d It\u2019s a very familiar form of address that has become a meditative and prayerful word in a lot of contemporary Christian music.<\/p>\nIn the middle of all of this, he spoke about the culture he came from and what people called priests. He said that it was interesting to him to find our part of the church in a huge dispute over the use of \u201cFather\u201d as a title. Of course, in the past 20 years, the dispute has been ratcheted up a notch by the ordination of us women, many of whom decided that if the men would be called \u201cFather,\u201d then they should be called \u201cMother.\u201d If you\u2019ve read my book, you know that I have consistently resisted that moniker as, in my mind, that makes it a gender issue and when God made me a priest, the Bishop didn\u2019t ask God to make me a \u201cwoman priest.\u201d I was made a priest by God, just as every other ordinand has been throughout the history of the church.<\/p>\n
Well, Bishop Santosh had seen my license plate and he started to talk about it and how I had certainly dealt with the issue for myself since I proudly displayed the name \u201cLady Father\u201d on my car. He said, \u201cI haven\u2019t read the book but I can tell that this Father thing is not an issue for you \u2013 you\u2019ve worked that out haven\u2019t you?\u201d I nodded, dumbfounded that he had so easily and freely advertised my book for me. Suddenly everyone was aware that I had written a book that was for sale. I couldn\u2019t have afforded to pay for an advertisement that good!<\/p>\n
When the session was over, I got a book from my car, inscribed and signed it, and when I encountered the Bishop on the way to lunch, I presented it to him as a thank you gift for lifting my book up for everyone in the room to see. I even marked the pages where I tell the story of how I got the name \u201cLady Father.\u201d I hope he likes the book; I know that I am honored that he might just read it. If you haven\u2019t, I\u2019d be honored if you would read it too.<\/p>\n
===========================================<\/p>\n
Susan Bowman, the \u201cLadyFather\u201d has written a book on her experiences in the ordained ministry.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the past 24 hours I have been attending a clergy conference. It\u2019s a wonderful opportunity afforded to the clergy of our diocese by our Bishop to get away from it all in a spectacularly holy place called Christ the King Spiritual Life Center in Greenwich, NY. This is an annual event, which I have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[230303],"tags":[32334,3141,786,53127],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-7079835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lady-father-the-memoir","tag-bishops","tag-father","tag-lady","tag-mouths"],"yoast_head":"\n
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