Rev. Dr. Michele Birch-Conery, Bishop ARCWP: She Rises Again

 Michele Birch-Conery, Bishop ARCWP: She Rises Again by Barbara Billey, Heart of Compassion Faith Community, Windsor, ON, Canada 

Michele Birch-Conery, Bishop ARCWP

Hers is a story of biblical proportion. After two years of roller coaster health crises and rebound recoveries, Michele Birch-Conery, bishop arcwp escapes near death once again. This time the trajectory of her resurrection is much different both on the physical and spiritual plane.

Michele was admitted to a long-term care facility in December 2019. The decision was made on an emergency basis, a choice between Hospice and long-term care. Michele's health had significantly deteriorated after a recurrence in August 2018 of a childhood genetic condition called cyclic vomiting syndrome. The pain that accompanies such a condition is dire and often lasts for several days. Michele had to be hospitalized for dehydration and electrolyte imbalances several times since then. Nonetheless, she continued to serve in her capacity as a bishop with arcwp, sometimes teaching us how to pastor, advocate, and collaborate on her behalf through her physical challenges. The justice work of advocating for an elder as her power of attorney from the "outside" was another learning curve for me. 

By the fall of 2019, Michele's health was severely compromised. She wanted to die but was not convinced (nor her medical team) that this would happen in Hospice's mandated time frame of three months. On admission to long-term care, neither Michele, nor any of us, in the Heart of Compassion Faith Community (HOCFC) had anticipated the coming of the covid-19 pandemic.

Initially, our visits and her outings with us made the harsh realities of living in long-term care doable for Michele, until persistent lockdowns and isolation from residents became the norm starting in March 2020. Her lack of freedom was exacerbated by hearing loss and an inability to see. How does one navigate a world where the voice of caregivers is muffled in a mask and the barrier of a plastic shield? Human contact was further impaired because the majority of residents with whom Michele lived had advanced dementia or other physical disabilities that made communication challenging.

In her usual easy-going manner, Michele used these early months as an opportunity to hone her contemplative prayer life and to work on her memoir by phone with me. As  Spring turned to Summer, the hopes of the pandemic ending were nowhere in sight.

An ordained person wherever we go, Michele recounted to me by phone one morning that Harvey, a resident she had befriended had died. She had been matched at meals with Harvey, who apparently talked the entire time, while she listened intently. Michele told me that at the end of every meal, unaware of Covid -19 restrictions about touch, she and Harvey shook hands. They had become friends over the past three weeks. On the morning of Harvey's death and before his body was taken away, Michele slipped into his room and gave him a blessing.

In early July, I could feel in Michele's voice that her spirit was waning. I asked, "What's important to you now?" "I spend every part of my day trying not to go insane," Michele replied. The social isolation was dreadful for her. I felt my heart sink with sorrow and knew that we had to get her out of there. Michele was more than willing.

And we did. Rhea, an eighty-two year old mother of six adult children, a retired psychiatric nurse and a member of HOCFC enthusiastically agreed to have Michele live with her. "It's the right thing to do," remarked Rhea. Other members of our faith community were overjoyed that Michele would be released. We all had missed her deeply. They agreed to help with food preparation, visits, appointments and the move. I secured community health support services and a wonderful medical doctor. Our arcwp priests from Michigan, Jeni Marcus and Karen Kerrigan offered our zoom celebrations, prayers and moral support.

Ordination Anniversary Celebrations

On the occasion of our priestly ordination anniversary celebrations on July 25th (near the Feast of Mary Magdalene) - Michele's 15th and my 5th - about thirty people from all over the world joined on Zoom with our faith community. We hosted our Word Wisdom Communion gathering to renew our commitments and to reflect on the many graces Sacred Presence had bestowed up on us. From her room at the long-term care facility, Michele offers us this wisdom.

"When I think of all of you doing studies about Mary Magdalene, nothing should be more relevant to our times. I think of Mary Magdalene teaching the apostles about what Jesus shared privately with her, as well as preparing them to continue their vocation as teachers of His Way.  She is a woman of our times. If there is any one person significant to those of us ordained as Roman Catholic women priests it is Mary Magdalene. I suggest she be named the patron saint of our movement. I see Mary Magdalene as someone who always maintains the peace, while being quietly vigilant about the needs of her companions and of the people of God. She was disappeared as have been many women of the Church. In her reappearance through contemporary feminist theologians and authors, her significant brings us hope for the future of women in the Church."

Michele Birch-Conery, bishop arcwp

On July 30th, Michele burst through the doors of the long-term care facility wearing a hot pink blazer, pushing her wheeled-walker. This was the first time outside of the building in six months. We happily travelled the twenty minutes to Rhea's apartment on the river where Michele would now live. Like the story in John's Gospel of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead (11:1-44), our Michele - wisdom elder, bishop and spiritual mentor - was returned to us and to herself.

 

As You Draw Near to Us - Ordination Anniversary Celebration Barbara Billey, priestess

Barbara Billey and Michele Birch-Conery, mixed media

This is what Jesus tells Mary Magdalene in a visionary encounter with him. "Where the mind is, there is the treasure (Gospel of Mary Magdalene 7:4)." 

My call to priesthood was birthed in an unexpected way. This sacred invitation came in the summer of 2010 following a worship service at an Episcopal Benedictine Abbey in Three Rivers, Michigan. I was at the end of a ten-day silent retreat at nearby GilChrist, a contemplative retreat centre where I had gone for many retreats over the previous five years. I was getting into my car for the drive home to Windsor, Canada when a kindly man, likely a pastor on retreat, approached me with a question, "Are you a priest?" I was shocked that he would see me this way and I told him I wasn't one. In my heart, I heard ‘But I want to be.’ With this awareness, I felt a deep stillness and calm. When I arrived home, the joyous madness began as I shared this new vision with my husband, family and friends. 

For me and for people who know and love me, the call to priesthood was inconceivable from its conception. My childhood play with friends did not include acting like a priest,  distributing cookie wafers for hosts or juice for wine. Although, I was educated in Roman Catholic (RC) schools, went to Mass every Sunday, and briefly, in my late teens, contemplated a consecrated life as a woman religious, I never dreamed of becoming a priest. How could I? I am a woman.

I wasn't interested in parish council, liturgical music or any other ministries of the Church; however, I sporadically was a minister of the Word and Eucharist. I was not an avid Bible reader who was drawn toward theology. I certainly was not a justice worker or activist. I was a psychotherapist with a passion for the soul life of persons and all forms of art, especially dance. I identified, as did many of my generation and younger, as "spiritual not religious." I went about my life being the best person I could be based on the values of love and care that my family and the Church had taught me.

In my youth and early adulthood, I enjoyed Mass at Blessed Sacrament Church where I was baptized and where I received all the Sacraments. The liturgy, especially the music and prayers, sometimes the homilies, inspired me. Probably like most RCs, my mind would wander. I was fulfilling my weekly obligation, because to not attend was considered a sin, even in the late 60s and early 70s of our post-Vatican Church.

My parents would drive my younger siblings and me from our middle-class, white neighborhood to where the Church was located in one of the poorer sections of the city. I really liked the priests, especially Fr. Joe who would rant about the latest bishop edict that didn't fit his notion of living Gospel values. My friend, Joanna was a music leader there. Fr. Joe was open to her subversive and frequent attempts to thread the Feminine Sacred through the music and liturgical movement. He rarely wore a chausable, most often baggy, cobalt blue sweat pants underneath an alb.  

Many good friends have been and currently are women religious and male priests. My passionate interest in the life of the soul and Buddhist practices held my attention more than my involvement in the Church. I was binary: Buddhist-Roman Catholic. In fact, there was a period of time in my 40s when I was so angry that women weren't included in positions of leadership that, in a radical act of defiance, I spent my Sundays walking in the cathedral of the forest near my home. At that time, I left corporate life as an Executive Director and for ten years, Pat St. Louis, a Sister of St. Joseph and I created a business called WellnessWorks. We facilitated retreats, programs or workshops that integrated spirituality, creativity and psychology.

You can imagine how a call to priesthood in the RC Church would have been a dramatic turn that upset the status quo of my comfortable life and of those who loved me. The push back from family and friends was unexpected. Although he did not object to me being a priest, my husband, Ken, in following his own truth, could not in good conscience attend my ordination. He thought I should work for reform from the inside of the Church. My mother told me I should not go ahead with ordination since my husband was not supportive. They were accustomed to my various changes, but this time I had gone too far. Some persons in my spiritual circles deemed my choice as a regression; the RC tradition was fraught with patriarchy and pedophilia. One person called it a cult. All they could see was the confinement of my free spirit by a roman collar around my neck. 

"Where the mind is, there is the treasure (7:4)." In the Gnostic Gospel of Mary Magdalene, the mind, in Greek philosophy and culture, was considered to be the heart. Follow my heart, I did. I was ordained Saturday, July 25, 2015 soon after the feast day of Mary Magdalene.

If becoming ordained an RC woman priest wasn't enough, living out this calling has been another animal, an elephant. There are many mountains to climb and as far as I know elephants don't climb mountains.

One of the harshest realities of ordination has been the loss of friends who left the RC Church because of patriarchal structures and abuses of women, children and persons who are LBGTQIAS+. Even though our faith community offered a refreshing new interpretation of our tradition, sadly, they were adverse to such an extent as to not be able to reconsider. My hopes were also dashed when only a handful of the 130 people who attended my ordination chose to continue on as a faith community.

As I plod the mountain trails, I discover many learning curves. Some of the requirements of my vocation:

·   1. To be current on global and Vatican politics and to bear the heart-breaking inherent injustices of God's beloved creation;

·   2. To recreate liturgy and Word to be a contemporary expression of Divine Mystery in a model of priesthood that embraces Jesus' values for equality, justice and empowerment. One where feminist, liberation, and evolutionary theologies are core our liturgies and ministries;

T 3. To acquire a third graduate degree, a doctorate in ministry, in addition to completing a program of preparation;

·  4. To examine in myself and to let go of communication patterns that reek of patriarchy and domination in order to be a model and to not repeat the harm that has been done due to these practices by our patriarchal Church and other sociopolitical institutions;

·   5.  To live out a model of priesthood where we flatten out the hierarchy by sharing power and responsibility;

·   6.  To be a computer geek who sometimes feels hermetically sealed to electronic devices; to balance work and family relationships; and to listen to people who know a lot more than I do and;

·   7.  To shift plans in order to be responsive in the moment to emerging pastoral needs;

·   8.  To embrace and enact with others psyche-altering, untried models of collaboration and consensus ;

·   9.  To endure my and others limits of aging and resources (human and financial) and to take care of ourselves and each other;

·   10. To love and to accept persons who are very different from me, and to collaborate with them in creating innovation in our praying and being;

·   11.  To bear the hurt of family members who show no interest in this essential part of me that is a priest;

·   12.  To wash and iron my vestments and table of worship cloths; with my husband to cook meals and to care for our home (unlike the priests who have their myriad assistants, paid and unpaid);  

·   13.  To be publicly identified by a Church official in the diocese of London administration as "excommunicating myself" because Jesus did not ordain women (Jesus ordained no one);

·   14. To do all this for free; and

·   15. To withdraw from the 24/7ness of this vocation to pray, to rest and to play, and to be with the Holy One who sustains us all in our dreaming and doing. 

Had I known what I was getting into would I have said yes?

Yes, I would have. Why? Because the vistas and views of this elephant-climbing-up-the mountain ordination are stunning. At every turn and around each bend is LOVE. Holy Presence draws nearer to me, sends me mountain-climbers to guide the way that have a lot more climbing experience than me. 

First, there are Jesus and Mary Magdalene, and then centuries of Christians who were persecuted because of their faith. Then there are our foremothers in the women priest movement, women who dared to place their feet on the path to ordination, making the way clearer for those of us who follow. They continue to mentor and encourage us.

There are friends and family who stick by me, especially Ken who is helping where and how he is able to give space for the fuller realization of my vocation as a priest. There is the Sacrament of Holy Orders that holds all this in a spiral of grace. 

Finally, there are members of our local Heart of Compassion Faith Community who are at the heart and soul of our holy machinations and mischievous reclamations of our rightful place at the table of worship and in the wider world.  

You, Sacred Presence raise me up so I can climb mountains. You raise me up to be more than I can be.

And now as You, Sacred Presence draw nearer to us, a new vision of faith community is coming toward us, where we are compelled to creatively embody Jesus' vision of open-heartedness, equality and justice through encounters that empower us in praying and contemplation, in sharing power and responsibility, in welcoming the unwelcomed, and in extending compassionate care to those among us in need.

As You, Sacred Presence draw nearer to us, You dance and sing us into more mad joy. Women are birthing the kin-dom of God into being. In our covenant with You, Divine Mystery we feel ourselves as Your garland of beauty and we are Your delight (cf. 61:5).