Chapter 18: Being a Minister

I had wanted to be a priest from being a little girl. The incense, candles, music, the robes – I wanted all of it. I knew I could never be a priest within the Catholic Church, so I put my dream away. It would be 40 years before it was realised.

I actually thought I had a vocation when I was approaching 18 years of age. I absolutely didn’t want to be a nun but ‘knew’ that you had to go where God called you. I prayed every night, “Dear God, if this is a vocation, please take it away. I really don’t want to be nun.” I went to talk to my favourite teacher – Sister Cecily Mary – about it. She explained that my brain had worked out that the highest, most ‘religious’ thing I could do was be a nun, so that’s why I was drawn to it. She said, “Go off to college, live your life, get your degree, become a teacher. If you do have a vocation, it will return. Don’t fret about it.”

The release I felt was immense and all thoughts of a vocation vanished.

My vocation did come back again 30 years later when I started to train to be an interfaith minister.

I had left the Catholic Church three years before I began my two years of interfaith ministry training, in 1996. Two different people had sent me an advert from two different places saying simply, ‘Did you ever want to be a minister?’ and giving notice of a meeting in London. The New Seminary, as it was called then, was being set up in the UK by a woman called Miranda Holden who had completed the training in the US and was asked to set up a training in the UK. It had been running in the US since 1981. Its core principle was simply to affirm the truth in all faiths and spiritual paths.

This is how they described it, “To use the metaphor of a tree, we are each rooted in our own tradition and they branch out toward the teachings of other paths. All authentic spiritual traditions express the same universal teachings using different words and symbols – the rainbow’s beauty consists of its many hues – unity does not mean uniformity.”

There is no set interfaith dogma to be followed and no fixed ministerial role. Each interfaith minister serves in their own way in their own communities. Some ministers choose to offer services of worship and celebration, others concentrate on spiritual guidance, some focus on a specific area such as working with the dying or the bereaved – and some might want to bring a spiritual perspective to the workplace. I wasn’t sure when I started what my focus would be but, by the end of the training, I knew that I wanted to conduct sacred ceremonies for special occasions. I wasn’t sure about the spiritual counselling.

I knew none of this at that first meeting in London. I just knew I was compelled to go. There were about 30 of us in the small meeting room, together with Miranda and the founder of the New York training, Diane Berk. We each had to stand up and talk for three minutes about our own spiritual journeys and why we wanted to be ministers. Good Lord! I couldn’t condense my life into three minutes and had no idea what this ministry training was even about. Whatever was I going to say? One by one, each of us stood up and said a variation of the same thing, “I don’t really know why I am here. I just saw the advert and knew I had to come.” We had to write a letter of application and get two letters of recommendation (I never understand this requirement – of course you are going to ask people who will say wonderful things about you!). We were all accepted into the programme, although only 18 of us were ordained.

The training was for two years. There would be one weekend every month in London, plus an end of year retreat after Year One and an end of year retreat and ordination at the end of Year Two.

The period of training, 1996 – 1998, was in the middle of my marriage break up and so was a welcome distraction from the tension and trauma at home.

I could focus on myself and my forthcoming ministry and try to stay connected to my spiritual self while my human self was struggling and in conflict.

In the first year we looked at the major religious traditions and philosophies and the similarities and differences between them. We were expected to visit different worship locations and to form study groups. As I lived in Leicestershire at the time there was no one near me and so I studied on my own. This suited me very well. I never liked group dynamics which always seemed to lead to groups becoming dysfunctional.

An important part of the training in that first year was to reconcile with any religious tradition we had rejected which seemed to apply to a lot of people who had left the Catholic Church. I was still angry with the Catholic Church, not only for its own actions but for providing the sword that seemed to sever the relationship between my mother and myself. More than a few people had left an organised religion and were harbouring hatred towards it – some of them had been abused by priests and elders. The work was hard but I was finally able to be grateful for my introduction to Christ, the hymns, the candles, the incense and the ceremony.

I had always seen the Church much like a dating agency in that once you had met ‘the one’ you didn’t need the agency anymore.

But I will be forever grateful for the introduction.

In the second year we learned about spiritual counselling and creating ceremony. The training was the most intense personal development training programme I have ever undertaken. I quickly became very friendly with Reema. She was also going through a marriage break up and it seemed that each month as we would update each other on what had been happening for us, our stories ran parallel. We had the same kind of setbacks, the same kinds of revelations. I used to know what was happening to Reema because of what was happening to me. Her background was Muslim. She had been a marketing executive but finally dedicated herself full-time to her son who is at the severe end of the autism spectrum. I was in awe of her generosity. She was like a Goddess to me – and still is. We supported each other and kept each other laughing, even through the hard times. I remember one exercise we did in class where we had to identify our most basic negative belief about ourselves and describe how it had shown up in our lives. Mine was, ‘I am unworthy of being loved’ and Reema’s was similar. I wondered if all women raised in a religious dogma were likely to hold this negative belief about themselves. My belief was played out with a mother who didn’t love me in the way I wanted and needed her to, and with a husband who took over where she left off. He also didn’t love me in the way that I needed him to.

I think that was probably the first time I started to make sense of the patterns that were showing up in my life.

Our ordination was in St James’ Church in Central London. It was packed with families and friends and well-wishers. I was ordained by Rabbi Gelberman – one of the original four people from different traditions who wanted to serve as leaders in their communities in a new way. It was from their original ideas that the New Seminary was set up first in New York. It was such a special day. We had been given white satin stoles, which are like long scarves, with gold embroidered symbols sewn down each side. The symbols represent all the major traditions. A plain gold circle at the bottom represents the spiritual thought of all peoples on the planet. I wear that stole in every ceremony I do. Lots of ministers choose to have a stole made specially for them after their ordination but I want to wear the one I was ordained in to help me remember my vows to serve. It’s the only gold thing I wear. I only wear silver jewellery and I look awful in gold clothes but that stole is precious to me.

A couple of years later I happened to meet a few of the ministers I had been ordained with. We were reminiscing about what a special day our ordination had been. Someone mentioned angels and a second person said, “Oh, did you see them too?” I asked what they meant. They both said that when they looked up in the church the ceiling was covered with angels. Quite a few people said they had seen them. I hadn’t but I didn’t doubt they had been there.

The ceremony I was drawn to conduct was the wedding ceremony. What better way to serve than create beautiful, personal wedding ceremonies celebrating love and joy and commitment? There are many couples who don’t want to or can’t get married in a church but want something more than a civil or humanist ceremony (which can’t have any spiritual references in it). They want a sense of the sacred in their ceremony. I can create a ceremony that can include spiritual elements if they wish. But they can also have a ceremony that centres on nature, love, relationships, connections without any explicit spiritual references at all. However they want it to be, so it is created. It will be inclusive of everyone who is there. I have married a Christian with a Jew. I have married couples where their families are strong Catholics and are worried about the wedding ceremony their daughter/ son is planning. No one feels alienated from a ceremony centring on joy and love and family members can be included at various points in the ceremony.

I realise that when I conduct a wedding ceremony, it is one of the few times I am totally present.

There is no other thought in my mind, except the words I am saying and the couple before me. I’m not wondering what time I will leave, or what I am doing that evening. It’s like a 40 minute meditation and I feel full of the love and the joy that the couple have been expressing to each other.

I don’t feel called to conduct funerals. Probably because in Ireland the death, the wake and the burial all happen in three or four days. The minister has to be available immediately. I was still heavily involved in my consultancy work, where sessions were arranged months in advance. I never held the intention of being involved in end of life ceremonies. The only cremation and memorial service I have conducted was for Sonja, who was in my esoteric study group. She was a single mum, only 49, with four children. She had cancer. She texted me a few days before her death to ask me if I would conduct her funeral service.

I never spoke to her about the service but I understood from her children and close friends that she had agreed with her local vicar that her memorial service would be held at the parish church and her cremation would be held in Dublin two days before. In Ireland, most people are buried in the Catholic tradition so, until recently, the nearest crematorium was a four-hour drive from where Sonja was.

Sonja’s body came home for the wake and I asked for a meeting with the vicar and Sonja’s four children which took place in her kitchen. The vicar, Rev Denis Sands, came in. He was an elderly man with a slight stoop and a white beard. I sensed that he would be very traditional. I stood and greeted him.

“I’m Reverend Geraldine Bown and I’m delighted to meet you. I would like to thank you for being so gracious as to allow me to do the service for Sonja in your church. That is so kind of you.” He looked at me slightly puzzled. “I understand that you agreed this with Sonja,” I continued.

He frowned. “Oh, that’s not what we agreed at all,” he said. “I thought that you were just going to do a couple of readings. Are you saying that you want me to turn my whole church over to you?”

“Well, yes,” I said, hesitantly, “That’s what Sonja wanted.”

There was a pause while he thought about this.

I said quickly, “Why don’t we sit down and have a cup of tea and talk about it.”

He questioned me about who I was and where I had been trained, maintaining an amusing, sarcastic smile.

He told me I would have to see the Bishop and he couldn’t say if I would get permission. I said I was perfectly happy to see the Bishop. Sonja’s children were getting restless and mused about going elsewhere. I thought to myself, Well, Rev. Geraldine, if you want to do more of these ceremonies then you will be having many conversations like this, so you had better get it right – and now!

I showed the vicar the outline of a ceremony I had prepared that I had brought to show the children for their input.

He started to read it and said, “Have you written these prayers?”

“Well, yes,” I said.

“Well, we have our own Church of Ireland prayers,” he said and promptly showed me the little standard leaflet he had brought.

I took a quick look and my heart sank – if this was the format, I could imagine Sonja rising from her coffin at any moment and coming herself into the kitchen. I had to think quickly. “And I don’t see any mention of Jesus Christ in your ceremony,” he said.

I smiled and replied, “You know, Sonja was a great lover of Jesus and he is mentioned later, but I’m going to put him in right at the beginning.”

He continued, “And I see you have readings from various texts. I don’t see one from the Bible.”

I nodded and said, “You know, Sonja was a great lover of the Bible so let’s put one in – do you have a favourite one?”

He was looking to find fault with everything, “And I see you have musicians playing and singing but I don’t see any hymns.”

I smiled again – I smiled throughout this exchange – “You know, I think it’s a great idea for the congregation to sing together – what hymn do you suggest?”

I sensed he was looking for a way to back down as I was adjusting the ceremony to take account of all his concerns.

Finally, I looked at him and said, “What would this ceremony have to look like for you to be happy for me to do it?”

Long pause.

I continued, “I would love for you to welcome people into your church to begin and also think it would be wonderful if you would give people a blessing before they leave.”

Whether it was this exchange or the realisation that Sonja’s coffin wouldn’t be there and it was actually a memorial service – I don’t know – but the vicar changed completely. And even when I said that for the homily I was going to explain to the congregation Sonja’s beliefs about death, which were based on the esoteric tradition and would absolutely not be in line with the Church of Ireland – he didn’t want to see it.

The ceremony lasted over an hour and was beautiful. There was the choir, of which Sonja had been a member, who sang and also led the congregation singing, ‘The Lord is My Shepherd’. We had a fiddler and a harpist. We had her children reading. We had a eulogy from her eldest son’s partner who read what Sonja had written in her diary about death just the week before she died. We had everyone holding a lighted candle while they listened to a beautiful musical rendition of, ‘Make me a Channel of your Peace’. There was a part of the ceremony where the congregation were invited to share a memory of Sonja. And although speaking out in church is not usual, in the event, about 10 people shared what Sonja meant to them. And throughout the whole ceremony, picture after picture of Sonja was projected onto a screen through a laptop that her children had brought. After Rev Sands had blessed everyone, people sat still, unsure as to whether it was finished or not. I stepped forward and suggested that we give Sonja a traditional send off and people stood and clapped and cheered.

The Irish have a strong, traditional, religious history.

The community in my little hamlet were very welcoming to me personally but shied away from attending any service I tried to offer.

The priest from Rosmuc had been at Sonja’s memorial service. He came and introduced himself after the ceremony and said what a wonderful ceremony it was.

The next day in the local church in Rosmuc the priest announced, “Well, it’s all been about death this week. Yesterday, I was at the funeral of John O’Donohue (a very well-known Irish poet and priest and philosopher) and then a memorial service in Clifden for a 49-year-old woman who left four children.”

My good friend and neighbour, Brid, was listening to this and knew he was talking about Sonja. She hadn’t been able to go to the memorial service.

The priest continued, “And standing on the altar where I am now, and conducting the service was a woman! Imagine that! What’s more, she lives here in Rosmuc! She’s one of us!”

The person sitting next to Brid whispered to her, “Who is he talking about?”

“Geraldine,” whispered Brid.

“Geraldine!” The woman’s mouth fell open, “Well, I never.”

A few weeks later, I asked the priest if I might have permission to use the tiny quaint Catholic church at the top of the lane to do a service.

He readily agreed and the week before he announced at all the Masses, “Now, next week there is going to be a special service at Gort Mor. It will be conducted by Geraldine. I can’t remember her last name, but you all know who I mean. She’s a very good person and I want you all to go.”

But except for Brid and her family, no one came. Even when the priest had not only given permission but directed them to attend, they still didn’t go. They knew I conducted weddings for people and would ask me, “How many weddings have you got?” but they didn’t see what I did as in any way connected with them.

I tried to set up a support/ prayer group for the women and asked Brid if she thought people would come.

“No,” she said immediately. Then, as my face fell she added, “Look, even the priest couldn’t get a prayer group going.”

I had explained on the notice I put up in the post office that the group was so that women could ask for prayers for some particular intention and the others would pray for that intention every day for the week. I realised that in a small rural community there was not enough trust for the women to share like this with each other, never mind me. I was just glad to be accepted so well, personally.

Old Catholic traditions linger on for a long time. One couple wanted me to do a wedding in a beautiful Catholic church overlooking the Connemara landscape. They had asked me if I would do the ceremony and I told them, of course, and the problem wouldn’t be with me, it would be with the priest. The priest whose church it was was happy for the church to be used but he was too busy to do the wedding. At that time, I wasn’t allowed to do a legal wedding, so we needed a priest to do the legal piece and give communion to those who wanted it. My local priest couldn’t do it as the Bishop wouldn’t allow it, so Brid suggested I ask the priest in a village about 30 minutes away.

“He is known for breaking all sorts of rules,” she said.

I went to see him. He was in his 60s or 70s with a greying beard and a kind face. He agreed immediately. I felt obliged to point out that the bishop had refused permission once.

He looked at me and said, “I have a different bishop and besides, it’s not wise to tell the bishop everything.” He smiled.

As people arrived in the church for the wedding he was standing on the altar and I was next to him in my white trousers and top and white and gold stole. People were expecting to see him but the majority of the guests had no idea who I was.

The priest gave the introduction, “I thought this day would never come but, after 40 years, standing next to me on this altar is a woman, Reverend Geraldine Bown, and I am absolutely delighted. She has done all the work in putting this ceremony together and she will conduct it. Now I’m going to do what every good man should do which is to sit down and let the woman speak.”

Things are changing in Ireland, albeit slowly, and the recent ‘yes’ votes on abortion and marriage equality are testament to that. There may be a day when the community calls on me. I’ll be here.

My organisational skills didn’t disappear altogether. All the skills I had accumulated from the previous 30 years started to be put to use in a new way. I ran workshops on ‘Practical Spirituality and Spiritual Intelligence’ and ‘An Introduction to Esotericism’ from my house. I hadn’t been able to combine spirituality with my consultancy work but now I didn’t need to try any more. I switched my focus from working with organisations to working with individuals.

I spearheaded a campaign to allow us interfaith ministers resident in Ireland to conduct legal marriages in Ireland. This was done under the umbrella of our UK ‘mother’ organisation – One Spirit Interfaith Foundation. Finally, six years later, in 2019, a group of Irish One Spirit interfaith ministers wanted to set up a separate organisation in Ireland so we could get authorisation in our own right to conduct legal weddings in Ireland. I became chair of our new Irish group – One World Ministers. I drafted a constitution and submitted the application for One World Ministers to be registered as a Nominating Body for Solemnisers. It was accepted. Four of us worked on a website design and, as I had already created a couple of websites, I established our group online.

I realise now that service is no more than using the skills you have in whatever situation they are required.

My ministry now consists of creating and conducting weddings, working on behalf of One World Ministers and being available to whomever I am needed to serve.

I have finally found my calling, my vocation. And while it’s about ministering to the world, it’s also about ministering to myself. I have learned not to be so hard on myself; not to beat myself up if I get things wrong; not to be so disappointed in myself if I fall short of the standards I have set myself; to forgive myself for my mistakes and to give myself the silence I need so I can hear the whispers of my soul amid the noise of the ego. Maybe this is the most important ministerial work of all.

Photo

Rev Geraldine

Questions For Reflection

What are all the ways you serve at work, at home and in your community? How important is service to you? What skills do YOU use when you serve?

A Blessing While You Reflect

“May the light of your soul bless your work

With love and warmth of heart.

May you see in what you do the beauty of your soul.

May the sacredness of your work bring light and renewal

To those who work with you

And to those who see and receive your work.”

From John O’Donohue: Benedictus