I've been noticing that there is a population here at St. Stoic that it is harder for me to become close to. Plainly put, it is the group of widows and other older women. (Not all of them, mind you, but some.) Sometimes it seems that no matter how hard I try to reach out, I just can't connect.

Trying to be conscientous, I have examined my own attitudes and motives as carefully as I know how. I have racked my brain trying to figure out what it is that's wrong with me that makes these women not warm up to me, no matter how sincerely I try to extend a hand of friendship and compassion.

One idea I'm exploring: perhaps it's a chromosomal defect of mine. I am certainly and irreversably missing a Y chromosome.

By and large, I have not noticed any negative attitude towards my being a woman in ministry at St. Stoic. In fact, folks here are ahead of the curve in that regard; the first woman ordained to the office of Minister of Word and Sacrament in what later became my present-day denomination has served this church, for about 19 years, when they were operating in a six-point parish/multi-staff/ecumenical model.

But there was always a man on staff, and sometimes more than one. And I changed all that. I'm it.

I understand what is like to be a person who responds to "male energy". I have been such a person, for most of my life. I worked for ten years in a completely female-dominated field, and some days it drove me crazy, even though I was dedicated to the cause I was serving.

I have supportive groups that are made up of only women--I always have had a women's group of some sort that I have belonged to. I treasure those friendships. I have women here in this Presbytery that I love, admire, and look to for support and advice. But my mentors, largely, are men. Men who love and support women, to be sure, but they are men. The ones with the Y.

One of them is a friend I got to visit with last week, my final morning in California.

See part 2