THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 7, 1996 TAG: 9601050200
SECTION: SUFFOLK SUN PAGE: 12 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY CAROLE O'KEEFFE, CORRESPONDENT
LENGTH: Long : 163 lines
IF JOYCE V. TRICKETT were called providentially to the ministry, as she says, overcoming major obstacles must have been part of a rigorous test.
She reached her goal recently and was ordained a minister in First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Norfolk.
But she arrived at ordination via a ``long and rocky road,'' she said during the ceremony.
A dozen or so years ago, the former, longtime resident of Suffolk had as her main life's goal to be a minister's wife.
She was recovering from a failed relationship with a clergyman when she heard ``in my head and in my heart, `You don't have to marry a priest. You can be one.' ''
She translated that to mean, ``You don't have to get your identity from a husband. Be your own person.''
She had already overcome many hardships in her nearly half century on Earth. There were more to come.
The Ohio native was scheduled to graduate from Kent State University when it closed during anti-war student unrest.
She was dating Rick Wilson. The two married and moved to Virginia, where he would work. Joyce Wilson completed her bachelor's degree in anthropology from her new Virginia home, mailing her last paper the day before son Joshua was born.
When Joshua was 3, she and Wilson divorced.
Now, she was away from home and raising a son alone. She got a job in social work. Mother and son lived from hand to mouth, for a time even living in a converted chicken coop behind the home of friends on White Marsh Road.
``It certainly was a most humble home, but it was the most fun,'' Trickett said a few days before her ordination in November. She wanted to save money to further her education, and she earned a master's degree in social work from Norfolk State University in 1980.
After that, she worked at the Western Tidewater Mental Health Center on Constance Road in a position she helped to create: substance abuse prevention specialist.
During the next few years, Wilson, who was born a Trickett, changed her name again - not due to marriage or divorce but to ``claim my own name separate from a husband or father.''
Virginia is her middle name. After a couple years of confusion about what was her first or her last name, she went back to her maiden name. Her unique business card has said, Joyce Trickett, also known as Virginia Joyce, Joyce Wilson and Joyce Virginia Trickett.
Trickett was active in the Episcopal church in Suffolk. After her 1983 calling, she began moving toward becoming a priest, but that was not to be. The Diocese of Southern Virginia told Trickett to wait a year.
``Then they said wait another year,'' she said. ``I said no and went to seminary anyway,'' without diocesan sponsorship. Glebe Church did, however, endorse her decision to move ahead.
In a short time, she was accepted at Yale University Divinity School in Connecticut. She went with the strong belief that she was on the right track but with little or no money, financial aid and big loans. She gave away most of her belongings and left town.
During a routine exam before Yale, doctors detected bladder cancer. ``Fortunately they found it early. It's gone now,'' Trickett said.
In April 1992, she was diagnosed with cervical cancer. She had a radical hysterectomy and is now cancer-free.
While at seminary, Trickett maintained constant contact with Glebe Church, which contributed financial support and much spiritual and emotional support.
The diocese was still putting her off. ``The fit wasn't right,'' they said. ``But I kept working at it.''
One bishop offered encouragement. He told her to see him when she finished, but the bishop had problems of his own. ``He wasn't able to be there for me,'' Trickett remembers. Other diocesan officials recalled Trickett had gone to seminary without their blessing and were not pleased.
So she was back home with no car and no money, no job, no church and no obvious chance of becoming a priest.
She moved in with a Suffolk woman friend. Trickett's mother, retired in Florida, soon bought her a car. Then, in about two months, she got a job in Portsmouth, and a place to live in Ghent. ``Christ met all my needs through the love of many people,'' she said.
With work and a place to live, Trickett began looking for a church with a better fit. She had determination and a master of divinity degree to go with it.
``I went to a different church every week,'' Trickett said.
After searching several cities, she found First Christian Church, also called Christian Disciples Church, practically in her own back yard. ``I had never heard of it before. I loved it. I called Mom.''
Her mother, Carol Trickett, was ecstatic, too. As a girl, she had been raised in the same denomination, but then she had married an Episcopalian, Joyce's father.
``It's come full cycle,'' Trickett said. She believes not much happens by accident, a belief that helped her through many of her crises.
She isn't willing to say God intervened during her ordination. But she and other participants found it at least interesting that the only man scheduled to offer Communion to the congregation got sick before the service and canceled, leaving only women around the Communion table.
``We didn't set it up that way,'' Trickett said. ``But we looked around and said, `Whoa. Way cool.' ''
It was the first time in the history of this particular church that Communion had been celebrated totally by women.
The pastor of First Christian Church, the Rev. Dr. Jack Austin, acknowledged the service would be unique. And that was fitting, he said. ``Joyce is a unique child of God.''
Ordained Episcopalians are called priests. Those ordained in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) are called ministers. Apart from that, there is little difference in the responsibilities or in the acceptability of women in those leadership roles.
Only about 11 percent of both Episcopalians and Disciples churches have women clergy.
Both Christian Disciples of Christ and Episcopal churches are Protestant, although the Episcopal Church is much older, having been formed around 1500. The Christian Disciples Church was formed in the early 1800s in the United States and is a breakaway from Presbyterianism.
The rector of both Glebe and St. John's Episcopal churches in Suffolk, the Rev. M. Webster Maughan, said at the ordination that Trickett's going over to the Disciples from his church was ``our loss, your gain.''
Trickett's mother said following the ordination that she is ``so proud to have a daughter who is a minister. I wish her grandfather Trickett knew. He was Rev. Trickett. Episcopal. But I was raised Disciples of Christ,'' she said.
Joyce Trickett's son, Joshua, 25, said that at first he thought his mother's plans to become a priest were ``peculiar.''
But, he said, ``that's what she wants. She always seems to accomplish what she goes after.''
The next goal? A church of her own. Where? She doesn't know. When? Doesn't know.
Trickett said she has three strikes against her. She's female, older and divorced. What she has is faith, determination and lots of supportive friends and family. She said after the ceremony that she didn't get this far alone and sees no way possible to carry out the responsibilities of her new title, the Rev. Trickett, without the continued help of those surrounding her.
During a laying on of hands, a ritual begun by St. Peter, clergy touch the initiate on the head and shoulders, acting as conduits for St. Peter's spiritual energy.
``It felt very heavy,'' Trickett recalled. ``I thought at the time, `I'm going to remember this moment.' During the service, I was aware of the responsibility that would be coming. During the laying on of hands, I was feeling that responsibility.''
She was charged by several high-ranking district and regional Christian Disciples to work for justice for the poor and the sick, animals, the young, and the ecosystem.
For now, she is working at FOCYS, a Portsmouth Community Services Board agency, as an in-home clinical therapist. ILLUSTRATION: Staff photos, including
cover, by BETH BERGMAN
Church elders and clergy lay their hands on a kneeling Joyce
Trickett during her ordination at First Christian Church.
Trickett leaves First Christian Church as an ordained minister. Her
goal is to have a church of her own.
Joyce Trickett, second from left, sings along with the church choir
during the ordination ceremony. Trickett felt called to be a
minister in 1983 and received her masters of divinity from Yale
University Divinity School in Connecticut.
by CNB