Her word is in faith
Published 7:00 pm Wednesday, February 25, 2004
Point blank — Rachel Taber-Hamilton speaks openly and frankly about her beliefs and isn’t afraid to air what she views as the bad of the Episcopal Church, Christians, and religion as a whole.
She understands why those outside the church don’t understand it and at times criticize it.
“The stigma of Christianity is well deserved,” Taber-Hamilton said.
She believes politics and religion are a bad mix, that church and state should be separate, and that President Bush should stop pushing his beliefs on the nation.
“It fails to appreciate the nature of diversity,” she said.
The Rev. Rachel Taber-Hamilton must walk gingerly for more reasons than pain caused by a blown disc in her back. She bears the weight of her church, the Native American people, her family, the battle of the sexes and the separation of church and state.
Taber-Hamilton, 40, is married to Rev. Nigel Taber-Hamilton, Rector of St. Augustine’s Episcopal parish in Freeland. She works part-time at Island Hospital as a board certified health care chaplain, was deacon at St. Augustine’s. She is now the first Native American Episcopal priest ordained in the Episcopal Diocese of Olympia.
The Rev. Peter Strimer, missioner for communications with the Olympia Diocese, said there are 37,000 members in the Western Washington-area diocese. There are 400 clergy members, both active and in-active who help guide the 102 congregations. Of these, a quarter are women. Taber-Hamilton is the first Native American to be ordained in the diocese.
In response to being the first Native American ordained, in an interview with Strimer for Episcopal news services, she said, “I think it’s indicative of the church’s overall acknowledging diversity and then be actively inclusive about it … It is only from listening to one another’s stories in a broad way that we can even begin to understand how we need to relate.”
The road to ordination has been long for Taber-Hamilton. She’s had to find a balance of not allowing her native spirituality to overwhelm others who believe it has no place in the church.
“The church is in this interesting position of both admiring native spirituality and distrusting its potential contribution,” she said.
She’s struggled to guarantee Christianity wouldn’t strip her identity as a Native person.
Her journey began long before her 10-year ordination process.
Born in Ohio to LaVene and Julian Taber, Rachel’s family has helped shape her path. Her grandfather was of the Shashanee people of the plateau region of British Columbia. Her great-grandmother was a healer who deeply embedded her people’s spiritual beliefs in Rachel’s mother.
Around the age of 4, Taber-Hamilton picked a bouquet of violets for her mother from their yard. Her mom sat her down for one of many talks.
“She let me know of her appreciation for the gesture, but that she didn’t need to be brought flowers to know she was loved,” she said. “She made me realize the violets were happy where they were and that love wasn’t just about us — it was about them too.”
Her father, now a Greenbank resident, was an agnostic who made his stance based mostly on science.
“He wasn’t thumbing his nose at the world. Ideas and thought were important to him,” she said.
He wasn’t alone in the family. Col. Robert Green Ingersoll, one of the most famous orators and agnostics of late 19th century America, is Taber-Hamilton’s great-uncle.
Julian Taber was a psychologist for the Veteran’s Administration, and traveled the U.S. in the 1960s and ‘70s to help implement different behavior modification programs that were popular at that time.
“I was raised with the thought that Christianity equalled mental illness,” she said. “People were coming to him mentally beaten up by religion.”
To further things, her mother was raised Lutheran, her agnostic father was raised Presbyterian. Rachel was left in the middle trying to find herself and her spirituality.
Periodically a friend would take her to the different churches they attended, but none felt “particularly spiritual.”
“There was a room full of people, but it didn’t feel like they were truly grappling with anything of deep meaning,” she said. “They were there because it was a duty, or that God was watching or it was just expected of them.”
What felt meaningful was her native spirituality.
“Everything else felt oppressing.”
While at college in upstate New York studying anthropology, Taber-Hamilton did a study project on the Trappist monks who lived in a monastery near the college. It is while studying this order of Catholic monks that Taber-Hamilton found she could open up to the possibilities of religion in her life.
She began looking for a relationship bigger than herself. It wasn’t enough for her to just be around Christians, so she joined the Catholic Church in 1985. Then it wasn’t just enough to be a parishioner — she wanted to become part of its leadership.
“I wanted to respond further,” she said.
She entered the seminary at Loyola University in 1990 where she received her masters degree in divinity.
Needless to say, her mother wasn’t exactly happy.
“Her biggest concern was that I would not be allowed to stay authentic to who I am,” she said.
Taber-Hamilton was living in a convent and preparing to take her vows to become a nun when she met Nigel Hamilton. They were married in 1993.
Based loosely on the realization there were no leadership opportunities for women in Catholicism, she became an Episcopalian in 1995 and has been working toward ordination since, as well as a becoming a professional healthcare chaplain.
Taber-Hamilton’s native spirit has evolved to become “Gemba‘a’teh”, a mythical white bear that later became a constellation — a name she took on after her ordination.
Her husband has supported her during her entire journey.
“It’s been neat to see the 10 year journey coming to a wonderful end,” Nigel Taber-Hamilton said.
Jerry Lubinski and his wife Chris were sponsors at the ordination performed by Bishop Vincent Warner and assistant bishop Sandy Hampton from the Olympia diocese.
Shortly before Thanksgiving Lubinski’s mother-in-law passed away, and it was the Taber-Hamiltons who came to deliver the last rights.
“Rachel was right there with everything as much as Nigel. How compassionate she was with mother was amazing,” she said. “Her love for people is so strong, if any stranger came to her they’d be helped”
Rev. Rachel Taber-Hamilton talks of healing all of the spirit, and that the opportunity shouldn’t be limited to only certain people or only just people.
“Healing happens always within the context of community,” she said. “For me its really about relationship,”
This should be offered to all, she said — “animals, humans, plants, everyone”.
“My spirituality has a creation center. All of creation has an intrinsic value not just some of it,” she said. “To talk about about radical inclusivity still implies someone is left out. This should be a table to which all beings can be a part.”
