Yesterday I spent the
afternoon at Christ Church Cathedral. I am doing some volunteering
there to get some experience of the life and work of a cathedral and
my first day involved a tour and a
brief insight into its history. During the tour I was surprised and
pleased to discover that the patron saint of not just the cathedral
but also Oxford University and the city of Oxford as a whole is St
Frideswide.
Born around 680
Frideswide is credited with founding a church, a community of women,
around which it is quite likely the city of Oxford grew. There is
little historical detail of her life still available to us but there
is a shrine to her in the cathedral which historically drew people
from across the country seeking healing. Today it is still a place of
prayer and sanctuary. Frideswide is tucked away in the corner of the
cathedral and I had previously known hardly anything about her. And
yet her name means 'Strong Peace' and she stands as a foundation
stone that a whole city grew around.
I was particularly
surprised by this female founder because my time in Oxford has
frequently been rather a macho affair. Though the church is full of
inspiring women, who are many times its real back bone, the voices
that emerge most loudly are often the male ones. The history of the
church is dominated with stories of men, the portraits that line the
walls of our theological college are nearly all of men.
Even now working and
thriving in the church as a woman takes a steady resolve and a good
deal of wisdom. Though a lot of progress has been made I often feel
that the difficulty that the male dominated nature of the
institutional church poses for women is poorly understood or
reflected upon. One way, it seems to me, that this can be addressed
is by remembering and honouring inspirational women in both our
heritage and in the present.
This last week I have
been reading a book called God's Troublemakers - How Women of
Faith are Changing the World by Katharine Rhodes Hendreson. I've
found it a hugely inspirational read. Not only does it chart some of
the significant achievements of women in the modern day at addressing
some of society's greatest needs but it also looks at how women are
doing so uniquely and with a different model to that which has gone
before. One of the exciting facets of these women's work is their
connection to the grass roots which drives their activism to change
the system.
Rather that being
distant from the problems they are attempting to alleviate, such as
domestic violence and child poverty, these women place themselves at the
heart of it. This is significantly different to what we experience of
many of our senior leaders day to day who often seem to have lost
touch with the 'real world' and the people in it. I wonder if having
an experience of alienation, for whatever reason, is raising up some
interesting leaders. Put simply if you have experienced discrimination perhaps you are less likely to discriminate. Perhaps we can begin to generate leaders who refuse the lure of the ivory tower
and dominating power and instead seek to raise people up and value the human connection as a primary driving
force for their work.
I'm encouraged that
when I am ordained in the Cathedral it will be in the shadow of a
great woman. It will help me to remember that those women are there
in our history even if we sometimes forget to celebrate them. It will
remind me that it is perhaps not so strange after all for me, as weak
as I feel, to take my place in the church. That, as women, we have a
heritage too and we can go on as leaders in the future with
confidence in our place, following in the footsteps of those women
who have gone before us.
