AGON
Courtesy of author.
Written for the occasion of her mother’s 41st Ordination Anniversary
(Sing, my tongue the glorious battle)
My dad writes
Πεγ
on the front of envelopes for my mother
sanctifies a language
of love, of holy mysteries,
birthday cards and valentines,
the name plate of her
Easter basket: hole-punched and
looped through with slippery
curling ribbon, a banner over gummy bears
and licorice, a magazine about British
royals, and everyone’s discarded black jellybeans that she
eats on the couch in a prone position, as she says,
recovering from four days of back-to-back
Holy Week services
(Of the mighty conflict sing)
Πεγ, he writes,
the way they learned while studying ancient Greek
in seminary I didn’t think women should be
Ordained, he says
the punchline being of course,
but then I met your mother.
They told me about a talent show
and how they did the magic trick of putting
my mother in a box,
(she agreed to this), and pretending
to saw her in half.
I held my breath each retelling
What if this time was the end?
(tell the triumph of the victim)
Πεγ he writes
invisible
in white wax crayon, then the dipping of
the Easter egg, a rose-blush revealing
the protesters
at her ordination not loud enough to stop
the lighting of the Paschal candle
the laying on of hands
the blessing of her call.
(to His cross thy tribute bring)
Πεγ.
“Peg,” yes, but
her full name here:
Margaret.
Breathed, invoked. Come,
Holy Spirit. Veni, Sancte Spiritus
Bring fire
Send dove
Protect. Anoint. Sustain.
Ordain.
And make her a priest in Your church.
The Rev. Margaret Duncan Holt Sammons (1948-2022) was a trailblazer in the Episcopal Church. She graduated from the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1977, becoming one of the earliest women ordained an Episcopal priest in the United States, and the first from the Diocese of Western Michigan (May 1978). In her 45-year ministry, she was known as an inspiring preacher, a gifted teacher of adults and children, an advocate for racial justice, a pastoral caregiver of extraordinary compassion and wisdom. She is deeply missed by her family, friends, parishes she served, and all who knew her.
