Reinforcing the Stained Glass Ceiling

I am a member of RevGalBlogPals, a supportive network for women clergy. I discovered this ministry some ten years into my own ordained ministry in the Church. Enduring the isolation of a solo pastorate and being surrounded by male colleagues, I experienced the need to reach out to other women who were juggling the tasks of ministry with all sorts of other roles in life. I immediately found kindred spirits who, quite simply,"got it", women who knew how challenging it is to balance all the different tasks assigned uniquely to women in Ministry. RevGalBlogPals remains a life line for me. I serve on the Board and I participate in their Continuing Ed events. Recently, some of my colleagues have been questioning the gender exclusivity of these events. This is my response:

When I began the process toward ordination over twenty five years ago, I had barely heard of the Stained Glass Ceiling. My denomination had been ordaining women to the ministry of word and sacrament for over twenty years and I had experienced some impressive role models of women in leadership along the way.

After training, experiencing a call to Hospital Chaplaincy rather than Parish Ministry saved me from some of the pain other women colleagues were encountering.when they applied for parishes and were rejected on the basis of gender. And each of my appointments since have been based on reputation and recommendation. Along the way,I have had occasion to challenge discrimination against women as I've encountered it. And, for a time, I was confident that there were cracks appearing in the Stained glass ceiling of the church. But, more recently, as my denomination grapples with issues of inclusion based on sexuality, it seems that, for some, re-establishing the church's historically narrow, male-dominated, conservative leadership is a priority.

Twenty years post ordination, my fear is that the Stained glass ceiling was too fragile for many and so now, it has been reinforced in all sorts of obvious and insidious ways. And, while the most effective way to counter this is for women to keep stepping up, to challenge this denial of God's call that does not discriminate on the basis of either gender or sexuality, when one is often the only woman in a room full of men, or when one's contributions have been mansplained one more time (and once is one time too many), it is wearing to keep going back for more. It calls for certain appendages with which only men are endowed. And, meanwhile, there are other tasks to be accomplished as the body of Christ: feeding the hungry, visiting the prisoner, sheltering the homeless, clothing the naked... Tasks that, as a woman in Ministry, I find it difficult to subjugate to the fight to be accorded my rightful place at the table as a woman called by God.

Hence my need to indulge in women only events that examine the role we play in an institution that continues to discriminate against us because of an alignment of chromosomes or of body parts over which God presided.

That tinkle of breaking glass? It wasn't the glass ceiling coming down. It was being reinforced.