The hat was a dark green, woolly, hand knitted, nothing remarkable, perched on the head of a tiny bird-like woman. “So, why have you applied for a job in this school”, she demanded. I responded well, I thought. Woolly hat had different ideas. “And, how do you think you’re going to work with all these children?” This wasn’t about what I could bring to the students. She was referring to my young family. “A woman’s place is in the home”.
The hat, now remarkable, is for me an icon of the societal attitudes of the time; because of who you are, you can’t play rugby, learn woodwork, choose a career, be a vicar, a firefighter… Cultural expectations fed the prejudice which affected half the population.
Thank God society has moved forward.
Psalm 139 says this:
‘For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful; I know that full well.’
God knows us, God made us to be who we are, we can be confident in our identity as children of the living God.
So why my icon hat, now? One Monday evening recently, I was taken back to the essence of the impact of prejudice. It hurts, it’s repressing, it’s depressing, it makes you angry. That Monday, in St Martin’s, people spoke courageously about their individual journeys and their current journey as General Synod members, each wanting acceptance in the fulness of who they are, reaching for a future that is bigger than the past. I thank God for the journey that we are on, the journey that says ‘we’ not ‘us and them’; the journey that says in Christ we are one body, because we all share in one bread; the journey that says ‘thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven’.
Thank God society has moved forward: thank God it will continue to move forward.
Mel Adams
