Communique Magazine

Impressions From My 1st NGO UNCSW

Beblon G. Parks, Member at Large – Social Justice
National ECW Board

Have you ever heard of a Huru Bag? If you haven’t, don’t feel bad! Neither had I. Learning about the role this item plays, along with many other initiatives and projects around the globe, stimulated my social justice conscience and re-awakened my passion during my participation at the 60th Non-Governmental Organizations United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (NGO UNCSW) in March.

So what are Huru Bags? One of the sessions I attended on “Consultation Day” was led by a young activist named Joy Lynn. It was entitled “Huru International Supporting Menstrual Hygiene: Management to Ensure Education and Empowerment of Rural Kenyan Girls.” Funding for this project is provided through the Clinton Global Initiative Commitment to Action. In Swahili, Huru means free. I never thought before about freedom in the context of what might limit a young girls freedom to go to school each day. I had been unaware that girls in some African and maybe other countries were deprived of an education because they did not have access to personal female care products. Now, thanks to this project over 500 Oqiek girls in Kenya are able to manage their periods and stay in school.

What an eye-opener!

What I saw and heard in the various CSW forums (workshops) and side-bar events were women’s voices, in many languages, sharing their stories and ideas—hand-in-hand working to end violence against women and girls, improve the economic welfare of women and ensure access to education and economic empowerment.

In his letter of welcome to The Episcopal Church delegation, the Anglican delegation, the Episcopal Church Women, Anglican Women Empowerment, and others gathered for the NGO CSW, Presiding Bishop Michael B.

Curry stated: I pray you listen, learn, and work together, focusing on the four on-going challenges to the achievement of women’s empowerment identified in The Episcopal Church’s written statement to UNCSW: enable women to access power and decision-making positions, foster women’s and girls economic empowerment and independence; eradicate violence against women and girls, and access to quality educations, decent work and decision-making; and health. Often when we hear about all that needs to be done—the suffering, the killing, the poverty, the hunger, here in the U.S. and worldwide—it’s easy to feel defeated before one begins saying, “I’m just one person. What difference can I make?” The answer is simple. One ECW member can make a huge difference especially if she/we join hands and work together! Look at the difference made by these “Ones” – Malala Yousafzai, Berta Caceres, and Sabam Naraghi-Anderlini. Will you join me in being “one” working to do just that? Let’s make a difference!

A Verger’s-Eye View of the Installation of the 27th Presiding Bishop

By Margaret H. Gordon, National ECW Board

The beautiful and majestic Washington National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. was the setting for Holy Eucharist with the installation of The Most Reverend Michael Bruce Curry as the 27th Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church and primate, the first African American to serve in this capacity.

The prep work for the event began long before that historic day, Nov. 1, 2015. Most of the vergers arrived for rehearsal on Saturday, Oct. 31. It was a day filled with bright sunshine, and the cathedral was abuzz with excitement as we gathered to do a walk-through of the highly anticipated occasion. Even the “keepers of the castle,” the greeters at the entrance doors, were excited. They recognized some of us and greeted everyone warmly.

On hand were the cathedral’s three full-time vergers and ten volunteer vergers who were going to be responsible for shepherding over 300 participants into the cathedral, including guests from ecumenical and interfaith communities as well as representatives of the Anglican Communion. We met for a general briefing, received our assignments, and then were off to find our briefing and staging areas for the next day. We also worked through any logistical issues we thought might arise. The day ended on a pleasant note and we left feeling confident we could help pull this off!

Sunday morning came with a dreary, chilly mist and the beginning of lines starting to form as early as our arrival time of 9:30 a.m. for a service that was scheduled to begin at 12 noon.

There was a short meeting of the group for any last-minute updates, then we again dispersed to our assigned staging areas, which for me was the visitors lounge in the crypt level.

The vergers’ briefing document consisted of 80 pages. Such attention to detail paid off when some 3,000 people filed into that holy place to witness this holy man taking his vows to be the next leader of The Episcopal Church.

In addition, technology was used to share the magnificent service with those not in the cathedral or even the nation’s capital. For instance, an unprecedented 11 video cameras positioned throughout the cathedral filmed the service for live webcasting.

Due to the number of participants, the procession was done in stages, by numbered procession groups. I was assigned to group four, specifically The Episcopal Church, which included staff from the church center in New York and three committees whose work had to do with getting a presiding bishop in place: the joint nominating committee, and the transition and installation committees. Altogether, group four had approximately 75 people. They knew each other and they were happy to be where they were.

We were the last group to process in before all the bishops, who preceded the liturgical procession. Although we were standing for a long time, the excitement kept the adrenaline flowing and we all made it up the stairs with energy to spare. We had a long walk ahead and we were ready and eager to go.

Overall it was a glorious day, a little long, but well worth the effort expended to be part of that particular All Saints’ Day.

By Lisa H. Towle

In the summer of 2009 I traveled to Anaheim, CA, where the Diocese of Los Angeles was hosting the 76th General Convention of The Episcopal Church. My role as president of the Episcopal Church Women of the Diocese of North Carolina was to lead our delegation at the 46th Triennial Meeting of the ECW. It wasn’t my first rodeo; I’d done the same thing at previous Triennials. What helped make this Triennial Meeting/General Convention unique, however, was that the Rt. Rev. Michael Curry, bishop of North Carolina, was, for the first time, the keynote speaker at the United Thank Offering Sharing Dinner. His exhortations, directed primarily at the women of the church, to “go into the world on a mission of witness … in a time of absolute and unprecedented change,” had the 400 people in the room on their feet, clapping and cheering.

Seeds were planted that night.

Three years later, I became secretary of the National ECW Board and also cosponsored, with Jenny Ladefoged, a Triennial Meeting resolution about the Board forming an ad hoc committee composed of intergenerational members to review and research the function and structure of the Board as well as the mission and purpose of the ECW. The resolution was adopted.

Three more years passed. Last summer at Triennial Meeting/General Convention I was elected president of the Board, a majority of Triennial Meeting delegates accepted with enthusiasm the report and recommendations of the ad hoc committee, and the House of Bishops elected Michael Curry as the 27th Presiding

Bishop and Episcopal Church primate. And so here we are. It was Soren Kierkegaard, a Danish Christian philosopher and theologian, who famously noted, “life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” The national ECW knows where we’ve been. We strive to be fully present in the now all the while working to help move Episcopal Church Women forward. Along  these lines, the joint nominating committee for the election and seating of a 27th presiding bishop offered some sage advice that speaks to the entirety of The Episcopal Church:“Delight,” said the committee, in the diversity of a “multi-national, multi-lingual, multicultural, multi-ethnic, and multi-generational church.”

At his All Saints’ Sunday installation Eucharist in Washington National Cathedral, Curry’s call for the church and its members to join what he calls the Jesus Movement echoed what had been said in Anaheim: “If you take the word ‘go’ seriously, it means you’ve got to trust the Lord.”

Episcopal Church Women do take mission seriously. It’s one of the primary reasons we were formed. It’s a reason this issue has the cover and content it does. It’s also the reason the national Board has selected “GO! Share the Word: Every Day, Comunicamos, Every Where” as the theme for the 49th Triennial Meeting, which will be held in Austin, TX in July of 2018.

Stay tuned and trust the Lord.

This poster feature, “Famous Female Episcopalians,” was created by activist, author, and artist Louie Clay (neé Louie Crew). The poster depicts the images of several well-known Episcopal women throughout history.

Clay, an Alabama native, is an emeritus professor at Rutgers and founder of Integrity USA, a U.S. not-for-profit organization working in the Episcopal Church in the United States of America (TEC) for the full inclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) members and their allies.

Clay has served as a deputy to six General Conventions from the Diocese of Newark, NJ. He holds honorary doctorates from EDS, GTS, and CDSP. He has published 2,363 of his manuscripts.†

To learn more about Louie Clay and his life’s work, go to http://rci.rutgers.edu/~lcrew/pubs.html
See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louie_Crew.

Deborah Smith Douglas profiles a distinguished woman.

She is a grandmother, a faithful communicant, and a pillar of the church. She knows the lit­urgy and most of the hymns by heart and she never misses a service. She taught Sunday school and vacation bible school for years. She served for years as the head of the altar guild and she still keeps an eagle eye on the young acolytes each Sun­day and, woe betide the crucifer who puts a foot wrong during communion.

In many ways, she is the institutional memory of the church, as well as the guardian of its traditions and identity.

You might assume that she is a cliché, a hat-wearing convention, a rock-ribbed conservative, pious and prim—the sort of “Church Lady” that Saturday Night Live made fun of, once upon a time. You would be wrong.

Christine Johnson is now near­ly eighty years old, and has been passionate about justice since, as a teenager, she watched crosses burn on the lawn of her family’s house in North Carolina.

Her father was a Black Baptist minister, and his in­volvement in civil rights in the late 1950s, and through­out the turbulent 1960s, made him a target for the Ku Klux Klan. This did nothing to stop him—or his fiery daughter (“I never did have the sense to be nice and quiet,” she admits)—from standing firm in their con­victions, rooted and grounded in their faith in God.

When Johnson asked her father if he was afraid of those who hated and opposed him, he answered calmly that his life was in God’s hands; that God had put him there and given him work to do, and that God would call him home whenever He liked. And until then, there was nothing anyone on earth could do to harm him—or, to stop him from doing what he knew was right.

The apple, as they say, doesn’t fall far from the tree. Johnson’s life has been marked by the same sort of fearless commitment to what is right. She has bound­less compassion for those who suffer, and bedrock awareness that in life and in death she belongs to God.

FOUND HER WAY TO THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH

As the daughter of a cradle-Methodist mother and a Baptist-preacher father, Johnson’s early religious for­mation was deep and strong. In her 20s, disenchanted with some aspects of the Baptist tradition, she found her way to the Episcopal Church. The riches of the Book of Common Prayer, with its Biblical resonance, prayers for all occasions, and Eucharistic liturgy, attracted her at once. She loved the round of liturgical seasons, and the fact that whatever Episcopal church she attended, worship would follow the same pattern—and she would be welcome. She was confirmed at Holy Trinity Episcopal, in Baltimore, where the Reverend Robert Powell, a prominent Black minister and community activist, was the rector.

Her involvement with civil rights began in her stu­dent days in New York City, when she joined Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders in protests, marches, sit-ins, and demonstrations of all kinds, both in Harlem and in distant cities to which they traveled by bus. She recalls proudly that she was arrested once…but, she wistfully remembers, she wasn’t sent to jail because the Richmond jails were already full.

When she graduated from nursing school in 1961, she went on to earn a Master’s degree in medical-surgi­cal nursing, specializing in clinical practice and hospi­tal administration. In those days, her career options as a Black woman were limited: she could either work at a segregated Black hospital in the South, or an “inte­grated” hospital in the North—but only on night shifts “so people wouldn’t know what color I was,” she dryly explains. She could also join one of the U.S. uniformed services.

So she joined the U.S. Public Health Service Com­missioned Corps and began a career as a nurse, administrator, and educator in government hospitals across the United States—from New York’s Staten Island to Baltimore and Detroit and Santa Fe—a career that would last until she retired (as a Colonel) from active duty in 2001. The armed services weren’t ready for women in authority in the 60s, Johnson recalls, much less Black women: the prejudice was more subtle in the North, but just as real. She wore her dress blues, rather than street clothes, when she went out to restaurants, “to make it a little harder for them to refuse to serve me.”

She met David Johnson at Friendship Baptist Church in New York City, while she was in nursing school. They married in 1970 and had two daugh­ters, Deborah and Christel, “named for our Lord, not a chandelier,” says Johnson. David worked as a motorman for the New York transit authority, operat­ing subway trains until the day he died. The couple separated, out of necessity in 1982, when Johnson was sent to the Indian Hospital in Santa Fe, New Mexico to be the deputy director of Nursing. There were no motorman jobs in Santa Fe, so despite the initial hope that he would be able to join her and the girls, David remained in New York until his death in 1992.

Deborah and Christel are now grown women with graduate degrees of their own. They are both mar­ried with flourishing careers in health care admin­istration in Washington DC and physical therapy in Dallas, respectively. After they came to Santa Fe as children, they spent every summer with their father, so they could stay close to him and be with their cousins, so that they might be part of a larger Black community growing up connected with that part of their heritage (which was never going to happen in Santa Fe, where Blacks even now comprise only about 1% of the population).

This pattern of the girls spending summers in New York was beneficial for the extended family and for their father. The summer pattern also allowed her to take different tours of duty away from the Indian Hospital while the girls were away.

As sensible for everyone as this plan seemed to be, at the end of the day Christine Johnson was still a hard-working single mother in Santa Fe, far from her own family roots. She plunged into church and com­munity life with her whole heart and mind, however, putting down strong new roots that have held fast for decades.

Johnson has done just about every job, and held every office at St. Bede’s, that it is possible to do and hold, (except for church suppers) “I don’t do kitchens” she declares with a grin. She has long been active in the local chapter of the NAACP, she tutors in local schools, and has taught nursing at the com­munity college. She raises money every year for the American Cancer Society. She is a cancer survivor and she has volunteered with at-risk youth at the Santa Fe Mountain Center and served on the board of the local battered women’s shelter. Currently, she helps young people from Santa Fe’s large immigrant population move toward citizenship.

There is a common thread that runs through and unites all that compassionate service. Christine John­son has a large heart for women, children, young people, for the disenfranchised, and the oppressed. “Whatever I do,” she says, “it’s because it’s import­ant for struggling people to know that other people care about them, and that God loves them.”

Johnson is not a cliché, nor (Heaven knows) a caricature of a gloved-and-hatted-pursed-lipped “church lady.” She is an eagle-eyed and lion-heart­ed woman who has given her life to God and to the work God has given her to do.

The whole Body of Christ, the communion of saints, and the Episcopal Church are strengthened and enriched by her presence among us. †

— Author Deborah Smith Douglas has known Chris­tine Johnson for more than 30 years, since they met as new members at St. Bede’s Episcopal Church, Santa Fe, New Mexico. Author of The Praying Life: Seeking God in All Things, Douglas is a writer, retreat leader, spiritual director, and Benedictine oblate.

By Connie Skidmore

This is the first installment of three articles to help orient each of you to the upcoming 2015 Triennial Meeting adventure in Salt Lake City.

Are you going to be a first-time delegate to the Triennial Meeting in June 2015, or have you previously been a delegate? Whatever you are, the 2015 Triennial Meeting should be an exciting time, so it is important that you learn about what to expect.

First of all, you will be participating in the largest official gathering of Episcopal Church Women (ECW). Held every 3 years, the Triennial Meeting runs concurrently with General Convention. The meeting provides an opportunity to meet with ECW members from all nine provinces within the Episcopal Church, women from within the Anglican Communion, ecumenical guests, as well as a variety of speakers and special visitors.

Secondly, as an elected person from your diocese, you will be an integral part of the entire Triennial Meeting process—from registration, to special meetings and elections, to reporting on these privileged experiences upon returning home. Prior to attending the Triennial Meeting, each diocesan president, or other designated representative, will receive several packets of information to review and respond to as requested. (All mailed materials will also be available on the National ECW website, at www.ecwnational.org.) Included will be a schedule listing the times and locations of each day’s events.

As a delegate, you will be expected to attend the ECW plenary (meeting) sessions and events. Delegates will have the time and opportunity to visit the General Convention Exhibit Hall, as well as attend various General Convention meetings, participate in diocesan group for activities and/or meals during the General Convention/Triennial Meeting “shared time.” (A special bonus this triennium: The opportunity to see and hear the newly-elected Presiding Bishop.)

Upon arrival at the Salt Palace Convention Center in Salt Lake City, delegates will register and receive a finalized Triennial Meeting information packet. A delegate welcome/orientation meeting will take place in Plenary Room, where you will hear helpful information to get you started. As a Triennial Meeting delegate, you will be voting on officers, resolutions and motions in plenary sessions. A hearing may be held at a certain time to help you understand a resolution, or issue that will be voted on in a later plenary. In plenary sessions, there will be an opportunity to speak to issues as they are presented. Questions are welcome, although it is expected that all in attendance follow the decorum of parliamentary procedure.

One of the best learning times will be attending the ECW workshops that are offered during Triennial. There are so many good choices it will be difficult to select just a few during the time available. A suggestion is to have each delegate in your diocese attend something different so you can take home a variety of information and experiences to share with those in your diocese.

The goal of the ECW National Board is to make the 2015 Triennial Meeting in Salt Lake City a wonderful and memorable experience for each and every ECW delegate.†