Un-Anniversary

Unlike many of my contemporaries, I've never marked (inwardly or formally) the anniversary of my ordination. It's sometime around now - I was a Petertide ordinand, or, to be more accurate, a Thomastide one though strangely it's never called that - but I can't remember the exact date and though it would be abundantly easy to check it I prefer not to. Occasionally it does one good not to know such things, it seems to me.

But this is my ordination stole, made for me by Mr Taylor (Robemaker) on the Cowley Road in Oxford. I wanted something straightforward and classical. Many new deacons have all sorts of things embroidered on their ordination stoles, to express something about their personality or outlook on things; all I wanted to express, in so far as I wanted to express anything, was 'I'm being ordained'. I used to use it regularly for baptisms, but then a former member of our congregation who was himself ordained returned to Swanvale Halt church a stole which had been owned by a priest who served his title here in the 1940s and which had passed through a couple of hands since: that one is much fancier, so I employ it for such solemn occasions now instead. So my ordination stole hardly ever has an outing now.

But, barring unforeseen events, it will be used again at least once. It will bind my hands after my death - the hands I have used to bless, baptise, marry and anoint, the hands that have taken holy things, like untold hands that have gone before mine. So I had better not lose it!