It’s a perennial question—whenever I meet someone new, be it at a bar or at church coffee hour, the question arises with a renewed intensity. The questioner grasps my hand, peers into my eyes, and sweetly asks: “But what do we call you?” It is one of those unique queries reserved for female clergy—right up there with “Where do you find decent-fitting clergy shirts?” and “Do you have to have a horrible haircut?”
The handful of women in seminary would cluster around after class and have intense conversations about how we would deal with these sorts of questions. As women’s ordination is still a comparatively new phenomenon in my corner of Christianity, we didn’t have a road map for this life. All the questions, all the customs that had been set down by male priests centuries ago had to be answered all over again, daily, by us.
Charged up with the hubris of the never-been-tested, I announced to my first parish that I would go by the title of “Reverend.” This, I felt sure, was a good name for me: Reverend Megan! Clean, no chance of confusing me with that Reverend Mother nun who smacked your knuckles in grade school, and if you squinted, you could even ignore the fact that it was grammatically incorrect. Perfection.
The problem was, I worked with an older priest who kept forgetting. He went by the old standby, Father Chad, and in public he would introduce me as “the Curate—though who knows what that means. Sounds like some sort of ham product, right?” We would stand side-by-side after the service, shaking hands as parishioners exited. They’d shake his hand (“We still on for lunch, Father Chad?”), then turn to me (“Great sermon again, Megan”), and I’d feel a nagging sense of unease, that feeling of hearing an inside joke no one’s explained to you. I didn’t stay there long.
In my next gig, I was a college chaplain out west. In Arizona, rules are not for following—rules are for scoffing at as you ride by on your lonesome journey. The local tradition was to term all priests “Priest [insert name here],” which I found unobjectionable, though a tad too functional and on-the-nose (it made me sound rather like a listing in a catalog: “Priest, seen here in several varieties!”). It was gender-neutral, and avoided the double standard that had crept in during my previous assignment.
I had one parishioner, however, who rebelled. Simon just would not do it. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I call priests ‘Mother’ and ‘Father.’ That’s what I do, and that’s because you’ve earned it.”
I hated it. Simon was easily old enough to be a grandparent, well-respected in the community, and active in the church. I had no desire to be his mother. Actually, I had no desire to be anyone’s mother. I wanted to be the young, fun, hip priest. I didn’t want to be mistaken for the Mother Abbess in The Sound of Music. Plenty of people already assumed I was a nun, which got awkward in a hurry.
More to the point, I wasn’t convinced I could pull it off. Most of my parishioners were older than me—the sting of being introduced to a slight older woman, only to have her respond, “Oh, you’re just a baby! You can’t possibly be a real priest!” was a daily occurrence for me. Who was I to claim a title that accorded that sort of intimate power when I couldn’t even convince people my degree was valid? I was familiar with the clergy who had set themselves up as lords of their own tiny universes: gobbling up all the air in the room, egos inflating each time someone agreed with their pronouncements. I didn’t want any part of that; I wanted to stay at a nice, safe distance from authority, and all possible abuses therein.
In all those conversations back in seminary, no one wanted to be a “Mother.” To be a mother was nothing near the strength inherent in “Father,” my classmates argued—it was a second-place substitute. “Mother” brought up conflicted feelings about your relationship with your actual mom, and worse—it led to unrealistic projections and expectations. It meant you had to be warm and fuzzy and nurturing and probably hang out with babies, the argument went. Let’s be good feminists, we agreed—let’s use gender-neutral titles only. Let’s stay at an safe distance, and never be confused with ego-inflating monsters!
Seminary itself had enabled this conclusion. When my female classmates and I learned to chant the liturgy, we were told to sing an octave lower, so the men in the congregation could follow along. When I led my first practice Mass, I was chided for wearing my grandmother’s pink sapphire ring and wearing my hair loose (“these are inappropriate distractions at the altar”). The only shoes allowed for serving in the chapel were soft-soled, shapeless and black—worn underneath vestments that (as we were taught early on) were modeled after the clothing of Roman noblemen. The black shirts worn with the clerical collar were shapeless, and seemed interchangeable with a garbage bag. When I pointed this out, the salesman stared at me. “They need to protect your dignity. You can’t have them fitted, now can you?” Gender-neutral was the best a girl could hope for, it seemed–because to be female was apparently a threat to the dignity and the authority of this 2,000-year-old institution in which we had fought so hard to be included.
But when I was assigned to serve college students, no one told them that. And those actual human students among whom I worked did not want me to be “Priest Megan.” They did not care about my authority-avoidance theories, either—they wanted to know me. They wanted to hear another story about my Great-Aunt Mozelle, and write songs about my grandmother’s pie recipe. They wanted to call me when they were worried about something on the news. They wanted to critique my outfits, and steal my shoes, and have lengthy conversations about Doctor Who theories. They wanted to send me their graduation announcements because their own parents weren’t around anymore. They wanted to text me to let me know they got home safely because their own parents didn’t care.
On one group trip to California for a conference, everything possible had gone wrong. After a frantic day spent sprinting through airports and arguing with the TSA, I was beyond thankful to finally sit down around midnight in the hotel bar with my fellow chaplains and pour myself a glass of wine. Then, suddenly, I noticed three of my kids appear and stand silently watching, like a line-up of hopeful, scheming kittens. At once, they burst into a Greek chorus of requests: “Megan, we saw this bird get attacked in the quad!” “We think it’s a pigeon or swallow or something. Do swallows have grey heads?” “We named it Davy, but a big crow pecked at it and we think it’s dead.” “We need to bury it and you need to say a funeral Mass for it.” “Right now!”
I looked at my wine, and I looked at the students. With a little sigh, I got up, found my stole—the scarf that signals my ordination—and trudged after them into the night. Their chatter surrounded me as I wondered how I had gotten to this place in my life, and more specifically, what the heck one says in a funeral Mass for a bird. This was not covered in those discussions back in seminary. This was probably another stab to the heart of the dignified priesthood. (Know who probably never said a funeral for a dead bird? George Herbert.)
We found Davy, who had indeed succumbed to his injuries, and I donned my stole. I spread out my hands, and asked everyone to pray, still wondering what I was going to say. I talked about how God had created all creatures, how our delight in their diversity was something to treasure.
As I talked, I looked at my students, standing in the moonlight. Hands clasped, eyes closed, crowded together. So small and young in a world that would as soon crush them as not. My throat closed up with tears.
“So,” I concluded, making a cross over where the bird lay, “we give Davy back to the God who created him, confident in God’s love for all of us, no matter what. Even the tiniest of birds.”
I looked at my kids. The girl with the boyfriend deployed to Afghanistan. The boy with learning disabilities. The girl in an abusive home. The boy struggling with his sexuality. Me, in my high heels, jeans and collar, praying in the dark.
Tiny, tiny birds.
We turned to go back to the hotel, and one of the girls put her arms around me quietly. “Thanks, Megan,” she said, “I knew you were the right one to ask.”
I hugged her back. “My pleasure.”
These are the things you do for family—tell the stories, worry until your stomach hurts, protect your kids, bury a bird in the middle of the night. There is a moving power in this kind of adoption; in being claimed by a new family of no select bloodline; in being welcomed just because of everything you are. That power rests in bringing everything you have to the table.
I worked hard over those years to prove to my students (and myself) that I was trustworthy, that I was a good leader; but that only worked to the extent that I could be honest and live like I kept urging them to live—as if every part of me was important, as if every part of me was a gift. As if it were fine that I wore a collar, jeans and heels all at once—
As if God wanted priests who were girls and kicked ass, and loved their people dearly, all at the same time.
When I took my current job, the priest in charge emailed me to ask what I wanted to be called. “I go by Father,” he wrote, “but it’s entirely up to you.”
I wrote back without hesitation: “I’m Mother Megan.”
The uninitiated still occasionally assume I’m a nun. I still haven’t quite figured out what abbreviation “Mother” takes, if “Father” shortens to “Fr.” I don’t know if I’m selling out the sisterhood, or how Gloria Steinem would feel about my choice. Last year, the clergy of Connecticut discussed doing away with gendered titles altogether, but for now the issue is not going away.
This Sunday morning, I will arrive at work again. I will wake up the man sleeping on my front steps, and ask him how his night went. I will hold the door open for the woman zipping in on her scooter, who brings me flowers in her old pill bottles. I will lament the trials of high school with a South Sudanese teenager, and solemnly promise a five-year-old that I will buy lots of brownies at her lemonade stand. And I will do it all with my long hair, my soprano voice, and my red pumps.
Because that is what you do for family.
Fr. is a terrible abbreviation for Father since Frater had it first.
haha I was just going to comment on that. I don’t see why, in that case, Mr. wouldn’t work for Mother…? Or, I guess, Mtr.
I use Mtr, when abbreviating makes sense. At my previous parish, everyone used first names only, including the senior priest, and I don’t mind that at all if it’s the general custom, but where I am now they have always called priests “Father.” There was a bit of a flutter about nomenclature when I arrived as priest in charge, but everyone seemed to decide quite quickly that “Mother” was fine.
Also — I would not be surprised at all to learn that George Herbert had done a funeral for a dead bird. I think he was that kind of priest.
The CPG Rules of Address list no abbreviation for “Mother,” but do show “Fr.” as an option for Father. http://archive.episcopalchurch.org/documents/07_r…
(Want to talk about the use of the title “Master” for young boys and the difference in age cutoff between that title and “Miss”?)
He does refer to buried bodies as “The shells of fledge souls left behind.”
The great “Catholic funeral for a dead bird” poem, as far as I know, is Skelton’s “Phyllyp Sparrowe.” But you and George Herbert certainly handled the pastoral aspect of it MUCH better than Skelton.
This is really lovely — thank you.
The tiniest of birds.
Thank you. I really needed to hear that today.
Nicely appropriate, too, so close to the feast of St. Francis. All God’s creatures are loved, no matter how small.
This was beautiful. Thank you.
Wonderful. I was so excited to read this because I’ve always been interested in women as leaders of faith; the first minister I remember was a woman, my mother frequently acted as a lay pastor for our congregation, my neighbor wanted very deeply to preach but was forbidden by her own church. You delivered and more. I was choked up by about halfway through.
I’d love to read more by you!
That was so wonderful. Thank you.
Loved this, thank you! Made me think of the Jesus-as-mother-bird analogy in whichever of the Gospels it is (I just want to gather you up under my wings and keep you safe because it’s a mean world out there, Jerusalem, and shit is going to go down)
In my Lutheran tradition, the title Pastor has become gender-neutral (in the strain of Lutheranism that ordains Pastor Sue as well as Pastor Dave–not the version I grew up in, but the one I found comfort in as an adult) even though it’s originally masculine. I love that Pastor Firstname is so welcoming and inclusive…but I also love Nadia Bolz-Weber’s Pastrix as an in-your-face challenge to the Man = Normal tradition that it grew out of.
(and part of me really yearns to become a pastor, but I don’t want my heart to get broken by a vocation again)
“And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.”
That Gospel is a lovely example.
There is also, from my limited knowledge, a degree of this in the Christian Mystic tradition as well – both Mother Julian (there we go) and St John Of The Cross work with metaphors of God-as-mother. Both talking about the God who nurtures and who helps us to grow – there’s a piece there about how we understand our separateness and close that gap as we grow, but I don’t know either of the texts well enough to develop that thought very well at lunchtime on a Tuesday.
Amen and amen.
On a day when I’m drowning in ecclesiastic paperwork, thank you for this reminder of calling.
I love all of this. I also eye-rolled at the whole “loose hair will DISTRACT THE MENS” thing. Life is still like high school.
I have noticed that there’s one middle-aged man in the congregation who seems to occasionally get a bit distracted by our Associate Rector’s curly hair and impeccable eye makeup during the service. But he’s her husband, so I suppose we’ll have to allow it.
I think if I had had a Mother Megan in my life when I was a child, I wouldn’t be so angry at the church as an adult. Beautifully written.
It does remind me of the happier memories and the better people I knew growing up in the church. I left (still a person of faith at the time) during the uproar over Bishop Robinson because I felt that if anyone really knew me they would reject and hate me too. I can’t go back, even now knowing that many Christians are NOT bigots and WOULD have accepted me, because I no longer believe.
I grew up in one of those parishes that would have never accepted a woman in any position of authority. Holy Nativity in Plano, TX. I don’t know if they’ve changed, but I suspect not, from the general gist of the bumper stickers last time I was in town.
>>feelz<<
This is wonderful. Absolutely wonderful. I also work with college students at my church… tiny birds indeed.
Thank you, Mother Megan, for writing this. And thank you to The Toast for publishing it. It’s so lovely to find a place on the internet with such a deep respect for religion in all its incredible forms.
This is beautiful. Thank you for your work. As the daughter of a female reverand and the friend of several female pastors, I know (second-hand) all too well the struggle of how to present oneself before the parish. Wear makeup, but not too much. Wear nice shoes, but not exposed toes, and heels are a no-no. Jewelry is right-out. Hair should be styled and colored (never show your grey!), but not ostentatious, and never down. It’s exhausting just hearing about it over wine! I can’t imagine dealing with it every day.
Btw, my mom tried going as Rev. (LastName) or Mother (FirstName), but every parish she’s been sent to has just ended up calling her Rev. (FirstName). She’s not terribly maternal. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Another daughter of a female clergy person here! (Both my parents are clergy, now retired, but Mom has an obvious call to tiny bird-tending that I’ve never seen in my father and will *love* this essay.)
I remember looking at articles from before I was born, when Mom was the first female minister in the area. At one point the local paper wrote a story about her joining the weekly volleyball match of area clergy. The story would have actually been kind of thoughtful, seeing as it focused on how social spaces can be even more challenging to integrate than workplaces, had it not been accompanied by a photo where the sharpest focus was on her legs. :/
Oh, and Mom went by Pastor (FirstName), as did my father. But they are pretty low-church.
Thank you for writing this.
Nothing has brought out my complicated relationship with gender like trying to combine it with the priesthood.
Also I think I read a murder mystery once about a priest and the sexton insisted on calling her “Father”?
if you have the name of that murder mystery, I would be interested to know!
Reverend Claire Fergusson mysteries by Julia Spencer-Fleming. There are eight of them so far.
I remember those conversations and I felt conflicted because I am already a mother. It took me time and a lot of pressure from my parishioners who were convinced that I own the title “Mother”. And so I have grown into it. I am called Mother Sharon and better yet, I answer to it.
Thanks for writing this, and for doing what you do. As someone who grew up in a conservative denomination that doesn’t ordain women and became an Episcopalian as an adult, I’m so, so grateful for female clergy. There’s something beautiful and profound and healing for me about calling a priest “mother.” I understand that gendered language in the church is a tricky issue, though, and that there are no easy answers or solutions that work for everybody.
This exactly. I also grew up in a conservative denomination and am now Anglican and healing is the perfect word for it. Finding a church were being a woman wasn’t be default a slightly sinful thing, but something just as worthy as being a man has been life changing for me. Every week when it gets to the part in the eucharist where the priest says: “you made a covenant with Israel, and through your servants Abraham and Sarah gave the promise of a blessing to all people” I get a little teary. Because I was always taught as a kid that God made a covenant with Abraham only. Sarah never came into the picture, except to be mentioned in passing as having had Isaac. The idea that women count enough to talk about Sarah, for her to actually be recognized as part of it? Completely radical.
Our faith tradition uses Reverend for ordained clergy, but anyone in it will tell you that if you are looking for the heart and soul of our community you’ll find it among the women everyone calls “Mama [Firstname/Nickname].” Some of those women are or were reverends, some will never be, but they are our center.
“There is a moving power in this kind of adoption; in being claimed by a new family of no select bloodline; in being welcomed just because of everything you are.”
Thank you thank you for this! And thank you to The Toast for publishing it! Ordained ministry can be such a lonely place (especially for women), and it was such an unexpected treat to find this here (though Mallory does keep up a steady supply of faith-based hilariousness, thanks be to God.)
Megan, thank you so much for your honest reflection on gender and priesthood! Your sisters at Virginia Theological Seminary so appreciate it : )
You have the best user name! A++ 400 internets for you.
Some years ago, I would have had a problem with the title “Mother”. Too maternalistic, like “Father” is paternalistic. I’m an adult, not a child. Now, after several years being formed by, educated by, and now working besides many women priests, I am happy and honored to call them “Mother” when they so desire. -Deacon Kevin
It was like that for me as a new lawyer. I was 40 years old, with grown children, but there were very few women lawyers. Other lawyers seemed to treat me as if I were somehow their little sister (if they liked me), or some weird misplaced female (if they didn’t). I felt joy when the Judge looked down at me and my colleague and asked, “Gentlemen, your arguments?” But as time went on I made my place as my own woman and never went to court without earrings and lipstick. And, until a torn tendon put me in flat shoes forever, my own “red shoes.” Love you, Mother Megan.
This was so lovely. I’m in student chaplaincy right now, and was in a congregational internship before that, and I am so grateful that my school is full of a cluster of fellow rabbinical students who perform femininity at a loud volume. I always get a thrill out of complimenting my sisters in clergy on their awesome lipstick or dresses, especially when they’re combining those things with tefillin.
This was so beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing this and being so wonderful.
This exactly. I also grew up in a conservative denomination and am now Anglican and healing is the perfect word for it. Finding a church were being a woman wasn't be default a slightly sinful thing, but something just as worthy as being a man has been life changing for me. Every week when it gets to the part in the eucharist where the priest says: "you made a covenant with Israel, and through your servants Abraham and Sarah gave the promise of a blessing to all people" I get a little teary. Because I was always taught as a kid that God made a covenant with Abraham only. Sarah never came into the picture, except to be mentioned in passing as having had Isaac. The idea that women count enough to talk about Sarah, for her to actually be recognized as part of it? Completely radical.
You have the best user name! A++ 400 internets for you.
Amen, Mother Megan. And thank you.
I was raised Catholic, and loved the ceremony of church, and loved God and the glory of the world with all my heart. As a teenager, I thought about how I could be involved; I wanted to be the priest, I wanted to give homily, I wanted to bless the bread. But, obviously, that was right out. Sisterhood didn’t call to me at all – at the time I had no idea the sort of comfort and happiness you can find in an all-women community – and so as I grew and changed and eventually fell away from Catholocism and Christianity in general, I let go any idea of ever being a leader of faith.
And now as a teacher and a faithful-but-not-Christian-but-how-to-describe person, I am so glad to read this piece, to think back about what I loved so dearly about church and how those feelings inspired in me a desire to teach and preach and honor each other as holy and wonderful creations of God.
I loved this so much. I'm sharing it with my own wonderful female priest, who blessed my dog for the feast of St. Francis and started our church's LGBT group.