Regular readers of this blog (and I have been amazed to learn how many of you there are) will know that I was approaching VIT’s big day with a mixture of huge joy and glad anticipation for her; and a degree of terror and anxiety on my part. The fact that it was at least in part irrational does little to lessen its effect, and you will recall that, in my head, what she had to do was marry the Bishop and then go away on a silent retreat prior to being forever changed into someone else.

So, the morning of O-Day dawned fine and early. I took the dog for a walk (very therapeutic) and went off to meet my favourite ordinand. We met in the romantic surroundings of a city centre multi-storey car park near the Cathedral. I would be lying if I said she looked as beautiful as she did on our wedding day but she looked very proper in her black clericals (including black shoes). And she looked as if she was more than ready for this day; a day she had waited for for 25 years. We sat and talked in the summer sunshine and then she went off to join the other new recruits.

So, this was about to be it. The moment when my friend suggested she would wear black as at a funeral. I was not wearing black – indeed I was wearing red shoes – but with all the anxiety that had gone before I did not really know what to expect, other than a rather special service and a great moment for VIT. What I did not expect was an extraordinary, simultaneous sense of excitement, reassurance and anticipation about what was in store for us both.

I don’t think this was an emotional response; indeed the emotions of the preceding days might well have taken me in the other direction. It was if, as the bishop placed his hands on VIT’s head (with some force apparently), God also did something in my head and heart with all the anxiety about the future, and with the frustration of seeing VIT messed around by a church which is still learning how to accept mature women with opinions, and the careless way in which the sending diocese dealt with the business of finding a curacy for an ordinand with three kids and a husband who works away from home. All of those things seemed suddenly to be second order things, less important than the sense that what VIT is doing is going to be a good thing for all of us.

Now if that isn’t a miracle (and I’ve been privileged to see one or two) then I don’t know what is.

Oh yes, and I am horrified and very proud of my son who had, within 3 minutes of her ordination, placed on Facebook a clandestine photo with the photo “she’s so holy”. And when she calls him, his phone reports that “The Rev” is on the phone.

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36 hours later some of the parents-in-law have arrived (I have three altogether), and so has one of my sisters-in-law. Tomorrow they are child minding and catering for Sunday while I go and pick up our middle son from school 200 miles away.  Daughter has run away to a friend’s house overnight.  Don’t blame her really.

There are three very odd contrasts going on.  Firstly there is a hive of activity here at home.  The usual things like kids to get to school and a dog to walk, but also the unusual stuff like tickets to make sure that people have for the ordination service on Sunday; people ringing up saying they “hope things go well” (how could an ordination go badly?), and perhaps the sweetest thing: an envelope addressed to VIT as “The Fairly Revd.”   While all this activity – manic at times – goes on, (and I try and fail to do very much work) VIT is spending her time in silence at a retreat house. An odd contrast.

Here’s the second and odder contrast.  She left the house a layperson and will return a clergywoman.  That’s a big deal.  Being “Revd” and wearing a dog collar says a whole load of things about you without having actually to say anything.  I know that it’s a big deal for most new clergy going out in their dog collars for the first time.   I am thinking I’ll find it a pretty big deal simply walking down the street with VIT wearing a dog collar for the first time.  Suddenly our house is “the one where the vicar lives” (not that she’s actually going to be a vicar yet.)  That’s contrast number two – the imminent change of state.

And the third?  It’s this.  Throughout the 23 years we’ve been married we have shared many things and done some other things without the other. Good friends once described us as a “loose confederation of states” – but actually this was more a reflection on lives where we were both busy and away a lot rather than any looseness of purpose or sharing with each other.

The last two years in Coverdale Hall have encouraged spouses to be very involved if they wish to be, and while I have no intention of being a vicar’s wife making cucumber sandwiches I’d be in cloud cuckoo land if I didn’t think that VIT’s ordination will have little effect on me.  We are in this together, like it or not.  At the End of Year service two wise clergy prayed for us.  Together. And about our lives together.  That was nice.   And unlike some dioceses, the one to which VIT is going invites spouses to the “marrying the Bishop” ceremony (oath swearing – see previous post.)   So once again, although of course it’s the ordinands who made the vows, the spouses are there. All the messages say “you’re in this together.”

But suddenly we are not in it together at all.  The contrast is very stark.  VIT has gone “underground” to prepare for her imminent change of state.  It’s  a bit like the bit where Dr Who has a kind of hiatus before regenerating.  His lovely assistant (that’s me) is left wondering what’s happening to the doctor and whether either of them will recognise the other when he re-emerges.  And although the Dr Who analogy is a far-fetched one it has more resonances than one might think.

The place where VIT has gone has no mobile phone signal, a dodgy internet connection and I have no idea whether they are allowed to call home.  (Are you disobeying the bishop if you do? Would an injunction to not call home be lawful or godly?)   I’m not calling her, preferring to leave her to her contemplation.  I have heard from her, which has been nice.  But there is a profound feeling of separation though – although she’s only 20 miles away she might as well be on the other side of the world.  I am missing her a great deal – far more than when she went to New Zealand for ten days. I think it’s because this is a preparation for something new and unknown – a little like a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis.  Will I recognise her on Sunday, and she me? I know the rational answer of course.

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VIT looked great in her new cassock with very pink lining.

We sat in the bishop’s chapel (surely originally a spare bedroom) and before the swearing there was a short service. Clergy do services to mark occasions. Then they swore the oaths to serve HM Queen, to not use unauthorised bits of liturgy and to obey the bishop in all things lawful and godly.

It was very moving, and the bishop conducted it with dignity and great humanity.

But I have to confess to finding that last bit about obeying the bishop immensely hard. How seriously should it be taken? Pretty seriously, given it was an oath sworn with bible in right hand and before God and witnesses. That’s as serious as any “I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth” oath in court, or as serious as a marriage vow. So we have to work on the basis that an order or request from the bishop, so long as it is lawful and godly is not optional. At all. It demands obedience.

Some might say it’s like any other job where you have to do what your boss says But few other jobs require you to swear an oath of obedience to him.

As the husband of the person swearing this oath, am I alone in finding that threatening at some level? At a rational level I can’t think of many circumstances in which this might be tested, especially one which was not the usual kind of juggling of diary or priority conflict that any married couple with three kids and two jobs might have.

But at a visceral level it’s a completely different matter. There’s a little bit of how I imagine it may feel to “give away” my daughter if she marries, in the sense that this is the next stage of that person’s life, which is wanted, desirable, prayed for and given by God, yet also a handing over to someone else ( in this case God, and his bishop ). But it’s not quite that, because that is about a daughter, and this is about my wife. And maybe that’s why it’s disturbing, because at an irrational level I’m disturbed that my wife has had to make some pretty profound, unspecified and open-ended, yet unbreakable promises to another man.

But she did look great in her cassock, and I think the bishop is a decent man, and she will make a great curate.

And next time I kiss her goodnight. she’ll be a clergy person.

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But here we are, just three weeks away from the big day, and an opportunity to look back over 20 months or so at Coverdale.  I am sure she’s learned a lot, but what have I learned about being a VHIT?

I have learned that being a vicar is not a normal job - it demands odd things of the person doing the job, at odd times of day. It demands that everything she does is mediated by belief or faith and a way of living which is 24/7.  In so many ways that’s no different from simply being a Christian, except that much of what she will be doing will be done in the public domain.  And that expectation, and the training for it, has an impact on the vicar and their families that is greater than a “normal” job.  None of that is necessarily good or bad. It is just a thing.

I have learned that the church is very trying, and trying hard. There appears to be a genuine attempt to accommodate the needs of families, at least in some dioceses and by some people. This need has a different priority in different places, and depending very much on the bishops, selectors, DDOs and college staff that the trainees interact with.

I have learned that the process of finding a curacy stinks, even if the outcomes are often surprisingly good. I have written about this before, but I still feel pretty scarred by the whole business and it’s left me needing to remind myself that the individuals involved in the shittier bits of the process are also people whom God loves, because I find it pretty hard to love them.  And I need to remind myself that maybe there are good outcomes from the shitty bits of the process which I am yet to see or understand.  I still maintain that the process could be much better, much less linear, much less secretive and patrician. It’s no way to treat grown ups or their families.

I have learned that I have a pretty bipolar attitude towards change: sometimes I find it really exciting, and at others I find it profoundly anxiety provoking, especially when the change is outside my control. (See paragraph above)

I have leaned that, if VIT’s colleagues at college are anything to go by, then the future of the Church in this country is in pretty good shape. VIT has had a fabulous, ecclectic and diverse group of people with whom to train. Of course there are some whom she (and I) have become closer friends with than others.  There are no doubt people there who will eventually become bishops and deans, while others will spend their lives in parish ministry.  But the energy and passion to tell the transforming story of the carpenter from Nazareth is writ large in everyone. I am proud and genuinely honoured and privileged to have had the chance to meet every one of them and their diverse families.  (And the youngest VKIT has found the ready made community of adults and children an immensely attractive and “safe” place to be.)

And now back to the title of this post.  As they used to say on the fabulously branded Great North East Railway “this is the  last and (tautologous) final stop.”

However, just as a train pulls out of the station to begin its travelling again less than an hour later, so the end of the Coverdale Hall leg of this journey does not mark the end of this blog.  There’s now two and a half weeks of a slightly strange limbo, followed by ordination, followed by three years of curacy.  The Vicar is still in training, and so is her family.

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It turns out that it was about the serious business of appropriate relationships with parishioners. Clergy (and many other professions) are involved in complex personal relationships, often with different expectations on either side, differences of power and unspoken agendas. These all need to be managed with considerable wisdom. It’s a tribute to that wisdom that the number of incidences of clergy forming inappropriate relationships with their congregation and others seems to be few and far between.

Anyway, the Proclamation Trust obviously takes this very seriously and provided a session for its senior leaders conference recently on “Working with female staff” – and judging by the advice on this blogger’s post, on working with female members of the congregation too. Here’s an excerpt from the blog:

“Given the reality of vulnerable people in our churches and the fact that low level abuses can rapidly escalate in a sexually permissive society, Christian ministers are already in the minefield if they are:

• engaging in prolonged eye-contact in conversations with women before or after services and meetings
• reciprocating or even initiating excessively tactile handshakes on the church door or even during the Peace at Holy Communion
• angling for emotional support in conversations about the running of the church
• asking leading questions about their relationship with their husbands.

Some feminists may argue that it is demeaning to modern women to suggest that they would allow themselves to be aroused by such means by cheesy vicars of all people.

Vicars who wish to negotiate their way safely through this particular minefield, however, would be advised not to listen to feminist complacency but rather to face up to the biblical reality of fallen human nature – our own and the women we minister to.”

Well.  Just fancy women allowing themselves to be aroused – how modern is that? I guess you boys are just going to have to be careful about the incipient harlots in your congregations. I can’t say I had a picture of conservative evangelical congregations as the obvious place for a sex-starved young women to spend her Sunday morning, but maybe there are some women for whom the idea of the conquest of a hunky vicar with certainty and chiselled good looks is a turn on. (Oooh this getting weird now…)

I am not sure which part of this advice I find the most cringeworthy or “icky” – and I don’t doubt the sincerity of the advice, nor the seriousness of the consequences it seeks to avoid.  But its whole approach has a juvenile, sexist and prurient quality which reminds me of a combination of my 9-year old’s teasing if he sees VIT and me kissing, together with a deeply misogynistic view of “woman as temptress.”

So was there any useful advice in this blog for my dear VIT? I shall remember to warn her about those excessively tactile handshakes, but I think I prefer the summary she was given by one of her ordinand colleagues after a “Pastoral Ministry” session on appropriate relationships.

“Just don’t fuck the flock.”

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Quite understandably, VIT has put considerable effort into what, and what not to wear. Here’s something she won’t be doing: it’s the LHOTP look. (Little House on the Prairie)
Then there’s this one whose web site designer wasn’t really paying attention.. VIT has done much better than this with some nice things. Funny seeing her with a dog collar on though.

Anyway, this exploration into clergy wear can be closed off with three things. Firstly the advice contained in the title of this post, and based on Mommy Priest to any women clergy – namely Snappy shoes and lots of accessories. Second, there are some well designed clergy clothes for women. Here’s one take on clergy women’s fashion from Sweden.

Finally, there is, of course a Facebook group for everything. Including clergywomen’s clothing. Here it is.we demand better looking clerical shirts for women

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