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been arrested during the Vietnam War for saying Mass on the
Pentagon steps, had advocated the ordination of homosexuals in
the fifties, and had been nearly shot by a Mississippi state trooper
when he went down to speak of civil rights at a black college in
1952. He and other bishops and priests spoke for the ordination
of women to the priesthood from the late sixties onward, but the
national church's governing bodies did not act. In 1974, after
much deliberation, conversation, and prayer, he and two other
bishops stepped into the breach and ordained eleven women to
the Episcopal priesthood in Philadelphia, without benefit of
church permission, risking censure and revocation of their licenses
to preach and preside. Dan was in his eighties at the time.
Anne Howard
was saying goodbye to Dan one day up at the monastery.
"Take
care of yourself, Dan," said Anne, turning to walk out
the door.
Dan stopped,
and said, "No, I don't think so."
"I beg
your pardon?" Anne asked.
"I don't
take care of myself," Dan replied. "I spend myself."
I felt an
urgency to reclaim the holy in my life, to find a new
way to spend myself. Kit's death gave that desire weight, a kind
of gravity. His death and its aftermath were benchmarks against
which I measured the clarity or falsehood of my next steps, the
next path.
And thus
I set out to do something new as a way to come to
myself, a new way to spend myself....
13
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Excerpts
from Practicing Resurrection ©2003 by Nora Gallagher are used
with permission from Knopf Publishers.
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