An Amazing Journey of Faith
by Ana Watts
With humour, honesty and humility, with some Hs where they didn’t belong and a few Hs missing from places where they did belong, the Rev. Ellen Curtis took ACW members gathered for their diocesan annual meeting on an amazing journey of faith.
As special guest speaker on the second day of the ACW Annual Meeting at Christ Church (Parish) Church, Fredericton in early May, Ellen acknowledged the important role the ACW played in her life. “I am honoured to give back anything I can,” she said just before she confessed she thought she had been invited to speak to a deanery meeting before about 20 women.
“Then I talked to Mary last week and she says ‘Oh no dear, it’s a diocesan event and there may be over 150 women present.’ Well, I thought I might faint, so I have to ask you to go gentle with me.”
In the next breath she confessed to being a proud Newfie with a sense of humour she hoped her audience would grow to appreciate.
They did. Ellen’s comic relief was perfectly timed to punctuate a story with its share of struggle and loss.
Ellen called herself a strange child because even though she was hyper active and had to be continually reminded to keep still in church, she actually liked church and Sunday school. Her first realization of God’s awesome power, however, came when she was about six years old. She stowed away on her grandfather’s fishing boat one foggy morning. By the time her father and grandfather found her, it was too late to turn back, so she went to the bow of the boat “Just like the girl in the movie Titanic,” the wind and spray in her face and dolphins racing and jumping along side.
Later, when the fog lifted and the sun shone through, they made for a small, sung harbour protected by high cliffs. It also had a small waterfall that tumbled down into the sea.
“My father filled a kettle with water from the waterfall. We gathered driftwood, started a fire and sat on the beach. We made tea and roasted kippers and bologna over the open fire. We had homemade bread and butter and dried apricots for dessert.”
The watched the capelin come in on the tide then were stunned to see two massive whales that had been chasing the silver fish come straight out of the water.
“All 30 feet of them, straight up,” said Ellen.
“We sat there, my grandfather, father and I, and watched two magnificent creatures of God put on the greatest show on earth … that day on the beach I rejoiced as I saw God’s awesome power displayed.”
That day she also became hooked on the sea. As a young woman she joined the commercial fishery. “I believe I was responsible for the addition of the word ‘fisherperson’ to the Newfoundland dictionary.” She also became involved in the politics of the fishery and as chair of the union she fought for cutbacks to the offshore fishing quotas. She then went on to become a Canadian Fisheries Observer, enforcing fisheries law and doing surveillance work on domestic and foreign vessels within Canada’s 200 mile limit.
“God always gave me the strength and courage I needed to do all that I could to protect my beloved ocean.”
On the day of her Confirmation she knew she would devote her life to God, but she was uncertain how to do it. “Women weren’t ministers at that time. I thought I could become a nun, but when I became a teenager … well, let’s just say it lost its appeal.”
Ellen married young, had three daughters and was active in her church. “I did everything from joining the choir, the ACW, vestry, the parish council, but it was never enough and I always felt God calling me to do more. He constantly nagged me. Nag, nag, nag.”
At an ACW deanery meeting a guest speaker named Sandra shared her faith story and told them of the obstacles she had had to overcome to be ordained a priest. “It was at that ACW meeting that I finally understood what God was nagging me about. God’s constant nagging was a calling.”
With three children to raise, it was a call she couldn’t fully answer. She became a layreader and then a lay minister in an effort to silence the nagging, but it would not be silenced. “I just kept saying again and again, ‘Sorry Lord, not yet.’”
The collapse of the fishery in Newfoundland forced Ellen and her family to pack their few belongings and their 17-month-old granddaughter in the car and head for Toronto in search of employment. They found more than they bargained for. The baby became sick and nearly died. It made them realize that the loss of their home and material possessions in Newfoundland was no loss at all in comparison.
Ellen’s mother lost a leg to diabetes. Her husband was severely injured in an accident, he went on to suffer chronic pain which led to other problems. Eventually they divorced. Ellen fell ill herself and nearly died.
“I was a cradle Anglican and a Christian my whole life, doing all I could for God, and now for the first time I said ‘Why God? Why are you doing this to me?’ I was sick and I was alone, for I had abandoned God and I was about to lose everything again, including my car and my apartment and I was about to give up.”
Instead, she fell on her knees, asked forgiveness and surrendered her life to Christ.
“I was such a stubborn and independent woman that this was the hardest thing I had ever done … that day was the most glorious of my entire life and one for which I will forever be thankful. I had taken 10 thousand steps away from God, but it only took one step back to find him waiting there for me.”
God continued to nag her, though, and she continued to say, “Lord, I am not ready yet. Then one day I swear I heard him say ‘Well honey, if not now, when? You’re not getting any younger you know.’”
She got the message.
She worked, maintained a family, studied and eventually was accepted at Wycliffe College in Toronto. Before she could begin her studies there, however, she needed a bishop to sponsor her. The diocese of Toronto didn’t need any more priests. She heard Saskatchewan and New Brunswick needed priests. She chose New Brunswick because it has the sea. Bishop Bill Hocking then chose her.
The courses were difficult and the reading pace was brutal, especially for a 46-year-old woman who found it as difficult to focus on one thing for any length of time as an adult, just as she found it difficult as a child.
“Then there was the language barrier,” said Ellen, and it had nothing to do with her ‘Newfie accent.’ “Everyone talked in theological terms that sounded like another language. Often after listening to a guest speaker talk for more than an hour I would turn to my friend and say ‘What did he just say?’”
Then there were the theological books. “They can be quite dry and boring, but you didn’t hear me say that,” said Ellen with a chuckle. “Sometimes I would pray ‘Please God, if there is anything you really want me to know in this book, the please make it jump out of the page and hit me over the head …’”
He must have complied, because Ellen maintained a solid B+ average. She was ordained a deacon when she came to this diocese and spent a year as assistant curate in Sussex. She was priested last year and appointed to the parishes of The Tobique and Denmark. The appointment is a pilot project of the developing diocesan Shared Ministry Plan. With five active churches in the two parishes, it is well suited to a self-confessed hyper-active person.”
Ellen finished her message to the ACW with a bit of advice. “Don’t let anything get in the way of your dreams, there are many ways you can serve our God … live in love as Christ loved us and obey God’s two greatest commandments, love God and love one another. And above all, never give up hope … if we have God, we have it all.”
Diocesan Communications
08 May 2007
