wfn.org | [ENS] Give that woman a chair,

["Matthew Davies" <mdavies@episcopalchurch.org>]

Wednesday, October 19, 2005 from Episcopal News Service

'Give that woman a chair,' Olympia bishop tells St. Margaret's gathering

By Mary Frances Schjonberg

ENS101905-06

[Episcopal News Service] Women's stories are missing from the history of
the church just as they are missing from secular history, said Bishop
Suffragan Bavi Edna Rivera of the Diocese of Olympia during the second
annual St.  Margaret's Lecture at the Church Divinity School of the
Pacific.

The title of her October 14 lecture, "Give That Woman a Chair," echoed
the effort to create the St. Margaret's Chair for Women and Ministry at
the Episcopal seminary in Berkeley, California.

Rivera told the nearly 200 people attending the lecture and lunch that
she feels a sense of responsibility to the women of her family along
with teachers, mentors and friends who went before her in ministry.

Echoing a poem by Daisy Zamora, a poet and former vice minister of
culture in Nicaragua, which speaks of only hearing the stories of the
men in her family, Rivera said "I search to today for the women of my
church, beginning with the women of my house."

She then told the stories of some of those women, beginning with one
about how her grandfather, Victor, his brother and all seven of his
sisters studied at the mission and seminary of the Church of Jesus,
founded in Puerto Rico in 1902 by Manuel Ferrando, who later became the
bishop suffragan of Puerto Rico. Her great-grandfather, her bisabuelo,
Pancho, sent them the mission center. Rivera said she learned during
her preparation for the lecture that it was her great- grandmother,
her bisabuela, who made it happen by asking them all, on her deathbed,
to join the mission

"It had always been Abuelo Pancho's story. Now I know it is shared by
Abuela . . . Abuela . . . Abuela who? I don't even know her name and I
have told you the one story that I know," she said.

Her grandmother, Philomena Torres Santiago, also trained at the mission
and Rivera said she learned her story from Philomena's daughter. Her
Corsican godparents, devout Roman Catholics, did not want their godchild
to be part of the mission, offering her their property if she left the
mission. She turned it down. Rivera said that her aunt said the only
thing Philomena and Don Ferrando ever argued about was women's ordination.

Philomena visited families in rural Puerto Rico on horseback, providing
pastoral care, organizing boys and girls clubs, working with local doctors
and nurses and finding ways that the women could use sewing and embroidery
skills to overcome their poverty. She also taught homemaking skills as
well as art and music. Rivera said that she has met other women from
India and Africa who did similar missionary work.

"I have a sense of responsibility to them. We have a chair for history
[at CDSP]. Do we have one for the missionary women around the world? Give
my grandmother and the deaconesses and the women missionaries of India
and Africa a chair. I search for the women of my church," she said.

Rivera also told the story of Abbie Loveland Tuller, an innovative
children's educator, who founded the Anglican Order of the Teachers of
the Children of God in 1935. At one time the order ran a dozen schools
across North America, including the Abbie Loveland Tuller School in
Tucson, Arizona, which Rivera attended.

She recalled spending 10 hours a week in the altar bread kitchen baking
and packaging communion wafers for sale. They worked with two older nuns
and, often, Mother Abbie.

"When she was there, the conversations were lively, challenging and
theological," Rivera recalled. "It was here that we talked about our
lives, our hopes and dreams. One afternoon, I remember I asked her if
she thought I might have a vocation to the order. 'I don't think so,
dear,' she said.  Mostly, though, what I loved about her was that she
took our spiritual lives seriously."

Rivera also told her mother's story. "I think she had to work hard to
claim her own vocation other than that of wife, helpmate and mother,"
she said.  Barbara Rivera became a teacher and social worker. She also
earned a master of divinity degree from a Mennonite seminary in Fresno,
California and later taught church growth.

Rivera said she suspects that teaching church growth was in part a way to
claim her part in her husband's work. "But even more it became a way for
her to give to the world what she needed most as a teenager and college
student: the gifts of love and grace that come from the heart of God
through the church to those who are lonely and alone," she said.

Rather than have a question-and-answer period, Rivera invited the men
and women at each table to tell each other their stories about the women
of their families and their churches. "Honor them by remember them,"
she said.  "Give them a place, a chair, at your table."

She also asked that those attending to tell one of their "living spiritual
forbearers" what they mean to them. "Remind them of the story you share
with them. Give them a chair in the university of your life," she said.

The St. Margaret's chair would be the first fully endowed chair of
women's ministries in an Episcopal seminary. The name acknowledges the
history of lay women's ministry in the church through St. Margaret's
House, a training school for women that existed at CDSP prior to the
ordination of women.  The effort has raised just more than $671,000 in
gifts and pledges.

She is the first Latin American woman bishop and only the 12th woman
bishop to be ordained in the historic episcopate of the Episcopal Church
and the 16th woman bishop of the Anglican Communion. She is the daughter
of Bishop Victor Manuel and Barbara Rivera. Victor Rivera was bishop of
San Joaquin, California from 1968 to 1988.

[SIDEBAR]

Alumnae awarded honorary degrees by CDSP

The Church Divinity School of the Pacific awarded Doctor of Divinity
degrees, honoris causa, to the Very Rev. Dr. Donald G. Brown, the Rt.
Rev.  Bavi Edna Rivera and the Rev. Dr. Katherine Ward during the
Episcopal seminary's annual alumni/ae convocation October 13.

The Eucharist during which the degrees were conferred was also celebrated
in memory of the Rev. Dr. Samuel McCray Garrett, who died in June. Garrett
was professor of church history at CDSP from 1964-1984.

Brown, the recently retired dean of Trinity Cathedral in Sacramento,
California, has served the Episcopal Church and CDSP in various ways. He
has been a deputy to the last five General Conventions and co- chairs the
Lutheran-Episcopal Coordinating Committee. Last year the Archbishop of
Canterbury appointed him to chair the Council of Advice to the Anglican
Observer at the United Nations.

Rivera was ordained and consecrated as the first bishop suffragan for
the Diocese of Olympia on January 22 in Bellevue, Washington. She is
the first Latin American woman bishop and only the 12th woman bishop
to be ordained in the historic episcopate of the Episcopal Church and
the 16th woman bishop of the Anglican Communion. She is the daughter
of Bishop Victor Manuel and Barbara Rivera. Victor Rivera was bishop of
San Joaquin, California from 1968 to 1988.

Ward is a former school teacher, counselor, principal administrator
who was ordained in 1995. She was the rector of St. Augustine's Parish
in Oakland, California, for eight years. She has served on a number
of diocesan and provincial committees. Ward now serves as the interim
pastor at Our Redeemer Lutheran Church in Oakland, and as an associate
at Episcopal Church of Our Savior, a predominantly Asian congregation
in Oakland.

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