She's a natural

The pilot announced our descent into Minneapolis and added that the current temperature was five below. Most passengers on our flight from the balmy Pacific Northwest gasped. Not I. I had finished my doctorate in the Twin Cities a few months earlier and had not yet lived in Oregon long enough to become a weather wimp.

A glance at weather.com had sent me burrowing into my closet to reunite with my down parka, double-ply thinsulate-wool blend mittens, and various head and neck coverings made from space-age fabrics. That weekend I would still wish I had remembered the long underwear, but not that I had avoided Minneapolis in January--as some incredulous colleagues had advised.

No way would I miss celebrating the tenth anniversary of ordination of one of the best priests I have ever known. Janet was the chaplain at the University of Minnesota's Episcopal Center. I met her at a monthly gathering of faculty and grad students, which had been advertised in the campus daily under the heading, "Spiritual Survival in Academia." Someone would talk for a half-hour about a topic of spiritual, intellectual, or professional interest (Confucianism, health-care policy, ecumenical dialogue), and discussion would follow. Meanwhile, we enjoyed tea, hot chocolate, and scones, a ritual I came to associate with Episcopal Church gatherings. (At the nearby Newman Center, you were more likely to get pizza.) I do not remember the topic of that first gathering, but I liked the format and the people, so I returned. I got to know Janet better, in part because I hit it off with her dog Short, her sidekick in ministry and later my companion, curled up on the lounge sofa, through two dissertation chapters.

For three years, I watched Janet interact with college students, faculty, and later cathedral parishioners as she led meetings, presided at liturgy, spearheaded a building project, created opportunities for laypeople to lead, facilitated discussion groups about faith and daily life, and participated in groups led by others. Like Short, Janet had a joyful, gentle presence. Her sermons (Episcopalians don't call them homilies) were invariably insightful, and served as frequent discussion topics in the car on the way home. She did all these things with ease, mirth, intelligence, and compassion.

Janet is a priest who does not put on airs. She does not make a point of calling attention to her status by the use of either titles or clerical garb. She is not churchy. She's a natural. Watching her is like watching the seals at the Oregon coast. You know she belongs exactly where she is.

I am sure that God watches Janet with both thumbs up and a big grin, well pleased with this beloved daughter. Otherwise her work would seem disordered or strained, her presence not so life-giving, her ministry less fruitful. In vain would the builder labor.

Of course, my grad-school immersion into this foreign culture made it impossible for me to return to my native Catholic one and not notice its strangeness. At Mass now, especially if it is a big concelebrated affair, I look around and wince as everyone seems oblivious to the conspicuous absence of women at the altar. The entrance procession looks like the Saudi team arriving for the Olympics ceremonies. It is so much easier to pretend all is fine, the emperor is clothed. But it seems a stretch to believe that the God who heartily blesses Janet's ministry would disapprove of it were it to occur among Catholics. What are the chances that God wishes Episcopalians to benefit from Janet's gifts, but not Catholics?

The morning after our casual but festive dinner party to bless Janet as she entered her second decade as a priest, she had to preach at the 8:00 a.m. Eucharist. I hauled myself out of bed and was rewarded by a homily (oops, sermon) on the passage from Luke 4 in which Jesus unrolls the scroll and reads, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me." Janet said, "It can be a worry to hear 'God has called me to this or that' out of some people's mouths. With Jesus we hear not arrogance, not madness, but authority." She pointed out that this scene follows Jesus' baptism and temptation in the desert by the devil: "Jesus is tempted to skate over his calling into the world on the smooth, frozen lake of denial," she told her Minneapolis congregation. "But he said yes to the Holy Spirit and no to the unholy spirit. And then he said it again. And again."

On the flight home to Portland that evening, I prayed in thanksgiving that Janet had made similar decisions, and that twenty-five years ago, when the Episcopal Church decided to ordain women, it too said yes to the Spirit.

Anne Marie Wolf is assistant professor of history at the University of Portland.

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