Canadian woman ordained deacon in Europe

The man at the e-mail service looked at my photos with interest. "So Michael is becoming a priest," he said. "No," I replied, " I am. I am Michele."

That June day aboard the good ship Sisi on the Danube River sailing out of Passau, Germany, Ann Sevigny, my sponsor, read the words affirming my call to ordination to the deaconate. The words sounded strange to me, but also familiar, coming across the centuries from early churchwomen, those deacons, priests and bishops who have been etched in frescoes on cave walls we can now see.

Ann looked magnificent in her dress, red roses arising from the black background. She wore a pendant of an orca whale at her throat, a necklace we brought from Canada's Pacific Northwest. Ann herself is on the path to ordination in 2005.

The psychoanalyst Marion Woodman, in her book, Dancing in the Flames: the Dark Goddess in the Transformation of Consciousness, uses words of Rosemary Ruether: "The shalom of the holy; the disclosure of the gracious shekinah; divine wisdom; the empowering matrix; she in whom we live and move and have our being--she comes; she is here!"

The ship was alight; the Sisi River seemed to glow. There was light from the outside through many windows, through the carefully tied yellow curtains.

I stood before the priestly ministers seated in the bow of the ship. Bishops Christine Mayr-Lumetzbeger and Gisela Forster, and Dr. Patricia Fresen.

Some participants came from the first ordination, the "Danube Seven," in June, 2002, others were from different denominations and faith traditions.

I read the Gospel texts in English. I had brought a small, palm-size, red leather Bible in the New International Version. The readings were from Galatians 3:23:28 ("No longer Jew or Greek, male or female, but all one in Christ Jesus") and from Romans 16: 35, in which Paul greets and thanks Prisca, a woman deacon of the early church who provided her home as a house church.

Genevieve Benay, a sister deacon, from France, read the texts in French and Monika Wyss from Switzerland, in German. We then lay face down in prostration.

Dr. Victoria Rue has said that in the prostration moments of the ordination, we lie prone, "not in a feudal position to a feudal lord but in a full body commitment to the life of a deacon."

We had been asked to submit the names of several saints who have inspired us. I entered the names of three North Americans: Rene Goupil, Kateri Tekakwitha and Blessed Marie Rose, founder of the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary.

Tears still come immediately to me when I speak of this part of the ceremony. We are like Peter, James and John, prostrate before Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration, or like Mary Magdalene, Joanna and Mary the Mother of James, their faces to the ground when they encounter the angels at the empty tomb on Easter morning.

We could have stayed in this position forever, but we needed to rise up for the moments of ordination and our realization that we were being called to service with the people of God.

I felt myself in an upper room with my sisters, and we then" received the Baptism of the Holy Spirit through the laying on of hands of an Episcopalian priest. It emboldened us to activism in our ministries, and to vitality in our communal prayer.

Bishops Rafael Regelsberger, Gisela Forster and Christine Mayr-Lumetzberger anointed us by the laying on of hands. When Gisela laid her hands on my head, I felt as if the left and right sides of my brain were coming together. Any others present who wished, laid hands on our heads. During this time, the captain of the Sisi was negotiating a series of locks on the river, the ship accessing different levels of the Danube, each time moving forward into wide-open waters. It seemed symbolic for our journey,

Then the stole was arranged from my left shoulder to the right side of my waist and on down. I was astonished at the sight of this length of cloth; now a symbolic garment that reaches almost to the hem of the alb.

For some time, I have believed that we women are so deprived of appropriate images and symbols of ourselves as empowered in the church, it is a miracle that we have accessed deep levels of faith.

I think now that even if others are not ready to hear you, you just have to be seen.

Bishop Christine's stole catches the light, the red flames arising from a forest green background. Gisele's stole, red and tangerine, suggests voice and freedom. The altar for the Eucharist was a small table, the vessels for the bread and wine made of glass. As new deacons, we received the bread and wine to distribute amongst the 80 guests.

I think Dr. Iris Muller, who was present, should receive the Purple Heart for her long labours for women's ordination. She received her doctorate in theology in 1958, and at 78, was ordained with the Danube Seven, in 2002.

There are thousands of women whose lives in theological study, teaching and preaching, are prepared for ordination but have been thwarted. On the deck of the Sisi I knelt alongside Iris' wheelchair, not so much asking for her blessing as hoping to speak with her at eye-level. She is the eldest of the first group of seven and I am the eldest of this group of six newly ordained deacons. She has written about women in five different faith traditions. "It has taken everything, she says, "including my health."

I had seen her, briefly, on CNN, when she came with Dr. Ida Raming for a tour of the eastern U.S. in the fall of 2003. The women, Iris supported in her wheelchair by Ida, hurried through an airport on the way to their flight back to Germany. I saw the genuine inclusivity of this movement and then, began to study myself.

On June 27, many of us met in another upper room at a conference center in Munich. We told our stories of call, and we met many people who have supported this initiative for years. The room filled with joy and light, laughter and tears and deep recognitions. We left in the knowledge that there was no turning back.

Michele Birch Conery lives in Parksville, B.C.

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