Looking forward and back

I'm off to Dallas in a week to see this darling little girl and her parents. She's nine months old already! Her mama texted me this morning and said, "Want to come to a Harper party when we're back from PR?" to which I responded yes with several exclamation points. My daughter and three of her cousins and her sister in law are all headed to PR next week for her bachelorette getaway on a beach, in a place with a pool and karaoke, and two of their number, my daughter and my niece Leah, will be traveling back to Dallas with Harper's mama afterward to spend a few days with that precious little one. Her dad, who works from home, will be traveling, so it will be good company and help for Harper's mama, who will probably need to be back at work in her dental practice. Harper will be in good and loving hands with her aunties and me. Plus, I'll get to hear all about the bach party on the beach while it's still fresh for the revelers. My girl has come up with a reality TV theme for the trip, including a Survivor challenge day, as all the young women on the trip are big Survivor fans (as I am). So! Dallas to see magical little Harper! I'm excited!

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Last night, as part of our church's 200th anniversary celebration, I attended the showing of a film, The Philadelphia Eleven, about the first eleven women to be ordained as Episcopal priests, against the wishes of the male bishops of the church, the majority of whom had voted down the idea of women in the pulpit at their 1973 convention. A year later, three bishops went against the church brethren and ordained eleven women deacons as priests anyway, holding the service at a Black church in Philadelphia. The Black minister at the Church of the Advocate queried his congregation as to whether they would support the act of ecclesiastical disobedience and they overwhelmingly were in favor of ordaining the women. Black people understood the value of civil disobedience in moving society forward.

This was in 1974, fifty years ago now, yet it seems so recent. I have vivid memories of my life in that decade yet I have no real time recollection of the fight to recognize women priests in the Episcopal Church. In fact, it never occurred to me back then that women could not be priests, at least in the church denomination in which I was raised. How oblivious I was. The women who were ordained were threatened, harassed, and vilified; the men, supposedly of God, who opposed them said the most hateful, misogynistic things in their desperate quest to uphold patriarchal power. The film was affecting, such that if I had seen it in my youth, I might well had climbed aboard that train, or at least covered the story when I became a journalist. Male priests who invited the women to conduct services from their houses of worship were actually put on trial by the conclave of Episcopal bishops and admonished, and even drummed out of the ministry. 

Here's the trailer for the film, and the first eleven women.

It wasn't until 1977 that the Rev. Pauli Murray (right) became the first Black person perceived as a woman (she was nonbinary) to be ordained to the Episcopal ministry, which made it somehow more meaningful that the first eleven woman, all of them White, had been ordained in a Black church. One of those eleven women, Merrill Bittner (third from right in the second row of photos above), moved me unaccountably. She had been a shy, reclusive girl who somehow fell in love with the Episcopal church and dreamed of the priesthood. As a young woman, despite her core nature, she stepped into that bright, hostile spotlight for a cause she believed in. She later left the ministry, disillusioned by the men as much as by the need to be constantly on stage. As something of an introvert myself, one who dislikes being on stage, I felt such admiration for the fact that she understood the historical moment and didn't shrink from meeting it. 

The little church in Harlem of which I am a member sponsored two of those eleven women deacons fifty years ago, and was at the forefront of the fight to have their ministry legitimized. I may not be in the pews on Sunday very much, but I do love that little church where my husband is a pillar of the community. The ministry is his path not taken, though he is no proselytizer. Rather he is a man of deeds. As head of the 200th anniversary committee, he hired a catering company run by ex-offenders to feed the audience at last night's showing. The food was good, too, and beautifully presented. 

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And now I am off to binge watch Slow Horses, which a few friends have recommended to me. I hope I like it as I have absolutely nothing else planned for this Sunday. I may take a walk around the gardens later, sit in the sun, and maybe read a bit more of the brilliant, searing, and often hilarious Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America by Michael Harriot. I'm otherwise unfettered, and trying to lean in to the possibilities of that. What movies or series have you streamed lately that you might recommend?