Sisterhood surpasses diversity

Shalom.

Today I made three GAFCON friends: Gretel, Jane and Rachel.*

Our initial meeting starts at a level that one would normally take several encounters to reach. After greeting each other with a warm bond knowing the situation that brings us here together, in a very short time we part having founded a level of friendship that we know may very well pick-up and last way into the future. And yet these women could not be more different to me.

* Gretel is American, and a bishop’s wife. I know it’s her in the row behind me shouting-out the loud AMEN after each good point is made all the way through the inspiring speech we are sitting through.

* I do not have to read Jane’s security name card around her neck to know she is a reverend. Unlike the Sydney mob she dresses in traditional clergy uniform, black shirt & skirt with the tell-tale white dog collar while her husband sits next to her in ordinary clothes. I am a bit surprised that they make clergy clothing that small in Canada for Jane must be a size 8, possibly even a size 6!

* Rachel is Nigerian and also the wife of a bishop. She surprises me by unfolding a new, large, white men’s hankerchief and promptly plonking it on her head as the Bible reading begins. The hankie remains on her head all the way through our opening ceremony, until the sermon is finished. At the end I have to ask her if she and all the women in her church at home do that. “I always cover my head,” she replies “but not all the women in our church do as I do”. 

Marcelle Rodgers, part of the ministry team at the Sydney Anglican Church in Newtown, will be providing providing readers with a lay person’s view the ‘sights and sounds’ of GAFCON

* Names changed for security reasons

Latest articles in Gafcon
- Archbishop Jensen 2007 Presidential Address - 1 year, 2 months ago
- Synod 2007 business papers - 1 year, 2 months ago
- Archbishop Jensen’s 2006 Presidential Address - 2 years, 1 month ago