MY COPY of Magdalen Smith’s Steel Angels hasn’t been seen since I lent it to someone about to attend a selection conference; so I hope that he passed it on to others when he was accepted for training, because the book was well tailored to match the criteria used to discern the aptitude of candidates for ordination.
Reverence, her latest title, traverses the same type of ground, but tells the story of Smith’s own priestly calling, making greater allowance for the reader’s lack of familiarity with the tradition and language of the Church. It is a less studious read than the book published in 2014, and is inspired by the writing of Mary Loudon, Kathleen Norris, and other women of that time who throw a distinctly feminine light on the personal experience of religious life.
Bite-sized chapters trace the journey from the Edenic clerical home of Smith’s childhood in Cornwall to urban parish ministry on the outskirts of Birmingham, via a gap period in South Africa, marriage to a Moravian priest, and the birth of two children en route. This chronology serves as a backdrop for the connections made between life and public ministry which reflect the author’s experience as a spiritual director and are written in the tone of a retreat address or homily.
While honest about the learning points of the pilgrimage, Smith guards her dignity carefully, giving more space to kindness and rituals encountered on the way than to the detail of challenging episodes. What emerges is a very human and down-to-earth account of the sorrows and joys of living as a woman in communion with others in a world in which beauty is marred by poverty, injustice, and unconscious prejudice.
Words and symbolic action are important to Smith. So, as I marked sentences that had to be read twice for sense, and noted typos that should have been picked up in proofing, I wondered about the merits of more rigorous editing, and feel that publishers should take more responsibility for that reputational safeguarding. That said, it is a slim book already; so to prune is counter-intuitive, if the number of pages determines its market viability.
The Revd Penny Seabrook is a retired priest in south-west London.
Reverence: A priest’s life of holiness and humanity
Magdalen Smith
Sacristy Press £14.99
(978-1-78959-361-7)
Church Times Bookshop £13.49