A Lot Like Eve

by Joanna Jepson

  Bob nodded and stroked his beard thoughtfully.

  “Well, you’ve got that ball rolling. So whenever it does come up we will deal with it and make sure the right support is in place for you.”

  That was good. It was good to be heading to a church with a vicar who would be supportive.

  Now that there was a curacy to look forward to and a church full of people to meet it seemed like a good time to begin dealing with the need for a new wardrobe of post-student clothes that I could work around the impending clerical collar. My big red trainers had been the subject of a polite email from the College Principal who, despite having enjoyed my sermon, questioned the appropriateness of such footwear poking out from under my alb. The end of red trainers was nigh; I needed to work out how to relinquish them and take on a dog collar and still feel like me underneath it all. On Valentine’s Day – without a Valentine in sight – I headed down to London, making a beeline for the Kings Road, my favourite London haunt.

  Back when I was at Trinity College, word had circulated that the women in the year above me had gone out and bought red silk lingerie to wear under their garb on the day of their ordination; I guessed they wanted to make sure they still had faith in their womanhood. Now, faced with the prospect of all those black and white robes and sensible shoes, I could see where they were coming from; perhaps swapping red trainers for red silk undies was an upgrade becoming of a newly professional young woman.

  But in all honesty it wasn’t my knickers that were bothering me. The problem was that anything I chose had to be worked around that most unflattering of things: the clerical shirt. It was difficult to know how I could ever manage to make that shapeless garment, buttoned-up to some halfhearted height at one’s throat, look even vaguely nice. I had been measured for my shirts by visiting clerical tailors and had duly placed my orders, only to be dismayed when the shirts arrived with two inches added on to all my measurements. “Yes, they do that to the smaller women’s shirts, I think it might be a modesty thing”, a size 8 ordinand commiserated with me. I had been called to the priesthood and sentenced to life wearing a polycotton sack, I thought begrudgingly. Even the Kings Road was letting me down. Every suit I tried on rucked up over the excess of ugly black fabric and I made up my mind to send the shirts back with a strongly worded letter. Which is why, amidst these vexatious musings, my attention was caught by the long hoardings running the length of the pavement: LONDON FASHION WEEK 2003 LONDON FASHION WEEK 2003 LONDON FASHION WEEK 2003. The words followed me down Duke of York Square until I got the message: the fashion industry. Where was God in the fashion industry?

  On that particular day it felt like He was nowhere to be found. Where was God when I needed help channeling spiritual gravitas with all the sassiness of Carrie Bradshaw hitting 5th Avenue? And that was just my niche problem; what about all those women and girls and men who every day searched their wardrobe in despair for something to wear that didn’t make them hate themselves; or all those people who, despite all the real stresses and problems in their life, just wished that for once they could look good in their clothes and not slightly inadequate. Because, for all our dismissal of fashion as frivolity, somehow these things still seem to get to us and matter to us.

  I thought about the God I worshipped: the God who wraps the light around Himself like a garment, who designed the cosmos with awesome playfulness and precision – just because. The God who spoke human life into being and kept pursuing that creative vision until man and woman existed together as equal vital partners. The God who delighted in telling them that they were going to be living, breathing reflections of divine creativity. When did we name and celebrate this bit of the God story? That creativity and design are part of our spiritual DNA; a God-given gift and vocation.

  In ancient times God had instructed the ancient priestly garments to be designed in gold and blue and purple and scarlet and fine linen. Now we had black polycotton and a guilty relationship with clothes, torn by suspicion, longing and a super-spiritual belief that material temptations were to be shunned in the name of God. I thought back to the complete delight I took in my dresses as a tiny child: the patterns, the feel of the fabric and the way I could make them swirl out around me if I spun round really fast. I remembered too how much I’d hated the brown flares Mum had made me wear as an eight-year-old, and my attempts to paperclip the flare back into a neat taper round my ankle. I thought about how my enjoyment of clothes had given way to shame and awkwardness in my teens, and the way I had become a silent spectator of those who still got pleasure out of dressing up. I remembered the wistful ache when, aged seventeen, Jess had unpacked her make-up case and held up a crimson coloured lipstick to me and asked, “Don’t you just have days when only red lipstick will do?”

  Sitting on a bench near Sloane Square watching the flurry of cold shoppers, I thought about God and where He was to be found in our search for the elusive perfect outfit. No matter how much part of my brain just laughed and scoffed at the idea of God taking seriously the sartorial angst of Western consumers, part of me suspected that that belief was rotten; a superficial dismissal of some deeply skewed wounds. And what about all the environmental and economic exploitations for which our consumerist appetites would have to answer? We could try and deny the place of clothes and all that stuff but we all have a relationship with them, just like we have a relationship with the English language or whichever language we speak. Because these tools are a way in which we speak and present ourselves to the world. They are part of how we tell the story of who we are, what we believe in, what values we have and who we want to reveal ourselves to be.

  For years Alastair had been dressed in hand-me-down clothes, none of which really fitted him, until on a trip to the States I started buying Abercrombie & Fitch shirts for him – in the correct size. Suddenly he sensed the transformation: “I’m a handsome man”, he said, smiling in the mirror. And he was. Now his shirts clothed him and made him look sharp. Now that his shirts fitted he wanted a smart blazer and sunglasses to go with them. He wanted his hair styled in a particular way. And so his new clothes began to speak differently; they revealed his handsomeness and his confidence, eradicating the message of oversized seconds which told the world he wasn’t worth buying new clothes for because he was disabled and didn’t really matter.

  The truth is that clothes, design, fashion and style do matter: they are part of what makes us human. They are spun from our spiritual DNA; gifts of creativity to enjoy and inspire, whether you’re a small child, a twenty-something nun, a young man wanting to be known for more than a disability, a celebrity or a woman on the verge of ordination to the priesthood.

  And if these things matter to us and impact us for good or ill, then the Church should speak of God in this industry. Which is how, that Valentine’s Day, an idea was born, to some day start a chaplaincy in fashion.

  29

  St Bob, Patron Saint of Curates

  On 6 July 2003 I was ordained a deacon and the seed that had been sown and taken a long time to germinate was at last coming into bloom – even though I was dressed in black and white. My new parishioners decorated my house and threw a welcome party and listened with encouraging smiles as I preached my first sermon. And, as word got out that I was a lousy cook, so the invitations began arriving: ‘We’d love to get to know you better – come for supper!’

  These people became family; we ate, drank and prayed together. And we were passionate about not remaining holed-up in a church building but getting involved in the strained, ugly, hard-bitten edges of leafy suburban Chester. A group began a tiny mission congregation based in a nearby school, reaching out to families and the elderly; we started a café and credit union on the social housing estate in the middle of the parish, I worked there every Tuesday trying to improve my cooking skills, but chatting with customers remained my strong point.

  It was like Emmanuel Church all over again, except my childish distinctions between Us and Them had now blurred. There were no longer the
do-gooders and the poor recipients of that good. It was a community of people prepared to be open to their own failings and fallibility as much as a place where hope was offered to those who were struggling and reluctant to enter our church building. It was the kind of place I needed to be; making my home among those outside church as much as taking my place behind the altar inside it. I found myself watching people now, pondering how they reflected sparks of God in their own unique way. It might be buried deep beneath a lot of horrid life experiences but, in the spaces in which I sat with people who were bereaved, guilty, abused, flailing, trying, desiring or depressed, I waited in silence, letting people tell their stories; letting that divine image begin to show through, even in glimmers.

  Bob, my training vicar, led me through each new task, sacrament and encounter without hurry, talking through the questions I needed to be asking of myself, and those that might help others find release from their various prisons. He gently wrestled away my carefully crafted sermon scripts, launching me into the spontaneity of sermons preached roving around the dais instead of gripping the lectern. He refused to let me get too comfortable in middle-class churchy concerns and ushered me into the chaotic parts of the parish where people looked for stability and shelter rather than sound preaching. And, despite being the leader of a busy, noisy, evangelical, chorus-singing congregation, Bob allowed me to introduce them to unfamiliar things like silence and contemplation and even the foreign waft of incense.

  Four months after my ordination we prayed for him and his wife and sent them off to Pakistan where they were to visit a missionary from our church. I can’t remember the exact phrase he used before he left. Was it “While the vicar’s away the curate will play”? Was it “Don’t get up to too many pranks”? Whatever he joked, neither of us expected the scene of satellite vans, television crews and spilling mailbags at St Michael’s that he would find on his return several weeks later.

  Just days after Bob and Pam had departed, my solicitor called to say we were on: ‘expect to appear at the High Court within the next four weeks; and make sure you’ve got some people with you to support you on the day.’ I called my Dad and my Aunt Helen and asked them if they would come with me. It was all beginning to feel a long way from a number on the abortion statistics and that phone call in Cambridge the year before. There were warning flashes of the rumbles that lay ahead: journalists began to get in touch and ask for interviews. My three phones rang. Constantly. Besieged by press, I couldn’t get out to buy food and was so grateful to a photographer who slipped out to buy me some milk and supplies. The Bishop called me in for a conversation and sent me off to Diocesan House for some emergency media training. The Diocesan Press Officer, David, arranged for the entire staff of Church House to wait outside for me and impersonate a High Court press scrum; then sent me out to meet them with a prepared statement, once as if I had won the right to a judicial review, and then a second time as if I had lost.

  The date for court was set for Monday 1 December, and on Friday 28 November Paul handed the case over to a brilliant and renowned barrister, Richard Gordon QC, and the ante seemed to have been upped once again. On Sunday 30 November the BBC sent a correspondent to Chester to film me making the journey down to London and capture the human story behind the unfolding legal case. Thankfully that correspondent had been a good friend of mine at Cambridge, and his presence as a friend reassured me where his presence as a journalist unnerved me. It began to cross my mind that we might actually put up a worthy fight in court even if we were never going to win a judicial review. But a good fight was something – at least it would break into the stalemate that the public discussion had become.

  Abortion always felt like a distasteful subject for debate, whether among friends or at parliamentary level. It was a vote-loser and MPs would rather spend hundreds of hours discussing fox-hunting than discrimination against the unborn. There was little political appetite for returning it to the House for fresh debate, even in the light of new advances in medical technology; even though a 4D screening could now show foetal development and leave people in no doubt about the fact that these were viable babies at risk.

  Thirty-six years after the Abortion Act had been introduced, it seemed that the debate hadn’t moved on much, and came down to the two sides hurling slogans past each other: “A woman’s right to choose” versus “Abortion is murder”. There wasn’t much space for listening; to do so might threaten the hard-won rights of the sisterhood and nobody really wanted to do that. When it was put like that, I didn’t really want to do that. I knew that in a messy world there were going to be times when abortion was the choice to make. Only I had stumbled on another story and, unless I told it, it might not be heard. That was why I brought the case: because it would give me an opportunity to tell a different story; not just to bring about a national debate, but to voice another story to all those women who were, and who ever would find themselves, faced with a doctor and the news that their unborn baby had some kind of definable flaw and that their best hope would be to abort. I wanted to stand for something else, something beyond the end of the story that doctors might tell.

  Because doctors, whichever point of view they hold, can only paint a picture for a mother and father in clinical terms. They might be able to say “your child will never walk” or “by the time they are eighteen they will have undergone this many operations” or “people will recognize your child by what’s wrong with them”. But neither doctors nor anyone else can tell a mother and father the full picture: the real layers of meaning that their child’s life will have; the sense of achievement when they outgrow expectations, or demonstrate staggering courage, or express their love for their parents in their own unique way. Nobody can do that. Doctors might have predicted the difficulties Alastair and I had had, but they couldn’t tell Mum and Dad about the relationships, the experiences, the full journey that we would make in living life beyond those painful experiences. Because that is about believing that, although it might not be the life you were anticipating, a life can be made for your child that is more than a medical prognosis. And it’s tough because, when you’re in that room listening to a medical prognosis, all you’re likely to hear is the worry and fears and doubts of your monkey mind yelling that your life is over.

  And that’s why I wanted to go to the High Court that Monday morning, because I wanted to tell those mothers and fathers and doctors and opponents a different reality; one that might exist beyond their worst fears and a medical diagnosis.

  * * *

  On Monday 1 December, after several rounds of breakfast TV interviews, Paul, Dad, Helen and I gathered in Richard Gordon’s chambers around the corner from the High Court. I was heartened by Richard’s confidence and the insight with which he had reworked the legal arguments afresh. But all that disappeared as we headed out and I saw the crowd of photographers and journalists, television crews, well-wishers and opponents waiting at the gates across the street. I hadn’t even made it across the road before the crowd moved and surrounded me, thrusting cameras, microphones and flashes in my face and shouting urgent questions at me. It was nothing like the jolly mock-up that the Church House staff had put on for me. I tried to smile and keep moving and not tread on a reporter but I generally felt like I was crowd-surfing my way through all these experiences, lurching through a tumble of press interviews and legal proceedings, and all the time trying to hold onto the clarity of my views and the story to which anyone could riposte, “Yeah, but you wouldn’t want to make a woman have a baby she didn’t want, would you?”

  Everyone wanted to know what I wanted or hoped to achieve. Did I want to ban all abortion? Did I want these doctors to be prosecuted? How did I feel about the mother? There were no soundbite answers, so I tried to ask my own questions. Like: Do we want to live in a society where we reject people with disabilities? Do we think that we’re going to evolve as human beings and as a society if we try and stamp out suffering instead of gathering together to meet it with shared courage? An
d where do we stop in trying to rid ourselves of suffering? Because it pretty much comes with the territory of being a human being and our humanity is seen in how we respond to it. Why should one life with identifiable deformity be given no chance when the rest of us with our carefully concealed disabilities get on and live without ever being called out on our flaws?

  In the quietness of the courtroom, in front of two judges and squashed up between a Sky News journalist and my aunt came the space for my barrister to put forward the arguments surrounding the case and the law I was hoping to clarify. Was this what the law was put in place for – to allow abortion for conditions like cleft lip and palate? Had the law been abused in this case? Was it in the public interest to allow a judicial review? And did I have standing to bring the case at all?

  The judges retired to deliberate and around me the courtroom hummed with journalists trying to read the situation and second-guess the outcome.

  A while later the judges returned and the woman from Sky News whispered “Good luck”, but within a couple of sentences of Mr Justice Rose’s opening comments Paul turned around to me and shook his head, “We haven’t done it.” I whispered to Helen, “Did you get that already?” I couldn’t see anything in what the judge had said to indicate I’d lost. In fact he was saying that if I hadn’t brought the case then who would be able to? He was saying that my experience of having undergone bi-maxillary reconstruction and growing up with a brother who has Down’s syndrome gave me a unique standing to bring this case to public attention. The judge carried on talking and I carried on trying to see why Paul thought we had lost until Sky News girl whispered “Well done.” And I let myself believe that we had actually won. There would be a judicial review of the police’s decision not to investigate and take seriously this potential abuse of the Law. There would be a fresh and rigorous look at what Jeremy Paxman described on Newsnight later that evening as “a very British hypocrisy”.