dual personalities

Well, I guess you can say we have been preoccupied with snow lately. It does have a way of disturbing one’s routine. It snowed again last night. Bah humbug.

Snow days are great, but those (school) days must be made up. As the person who decides when to call a snow day, stress ensues. It is at such times that I turn to my lectionary.

Today in the Episcopal Church it is the feast day of Julia Chester Emery, missioner and founder of the United Thank Offering. We remember Julia for raising funds, organizing volunteers, administering institutions, and educating lay members of the church.

“Apparently, her only training for this ministry was a willingness to try it, for she possessed no special education or preparation. Her only authority was collegial, for being a lay woman, she had neither the office nor the perquisites of ordained status to buttress her leadership. Julia Emery reminds us that we all possess the resources we need to be effective missionaries, except perhaps the two most important qualities exemplified in her—a willingness to try and the commitment to stick with it, even for a lifetime.” (Brightest and Best: A Companion to the Lesser Feasts and Fasts by Sam Portaro )

I can certainly relate to her. I mean, she is the ultimate Church Lady.

Julia Chester Emery was born in Dorchester, Massachusetts, in 1852. In 1876 she succeeded her sister, Mary, as Secretary of the Woman’s Auxiliary of the Board of Missions which had been established by the General Convention in 1871.

During the forty years she served as Secretary, Julia helped the Church to recognize its call to proclaim the Gospel both at home and overseas. Her faith, her courage, her spirit of adventure and her ability to inspire others combined to make her a leader respected and valued by the whole Church.

She visited every diocese and missionary district within the United States, encouraging and expanding the work of the Woman’s Auxiliary; and in 1908 she served as a delegate to the Pan-Anglican Congress in London. From there she traveled around the world, visiting missions in remote areas of China, in Japan, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Hawaii, and then all the dioceses on the Pacific Coast before returning to New York. In spite of the fact that travel was not easy, she wrote that she went forth “with hope for enlargement of vision, opening up new occasions for service, acceptance of new tasks.”

Through her leadership a network of branches of the Woman’s Auxiliary was established which shared a vision of and a commitment to the Church’s mission. An emphasis on educational programs, a growing recognition of social issues, development of leadership among women, and the creation of the United Thank Offering are a further part of the legacy Julia left to the Church when she retired in 1916.

In 1921, the year before she died, the following appeared in the Spirit of Missions: “In all these enterprises of the Church no single agency has done so much in the last half-century to further the Church’s Mission as the Woman’s Auxiliary.” Much of that accomplishment was due to the creative spirit of its Secretary of forty of those fifty years, Julia Chester Emery.

Quoted from the Holy Women, Holy Men blog

God of all creation, thou callest us in Christ to make disciples of all nations and to proclaim thy mercy and love: Grant that we, after the example of thy servant Julia Chester Emery, may have vision and courage in proclaiming the Gospel to the ends of the earth; through Jesus Christ our light and our salvation, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Lets hear it for Julia Chester Emery! A woman with vision and courage and no “training” who got the job done.