PORT ANGELES — When interviewing for her new assignment, the Rev. Gail Wheatley spoke of a different kind of Christmas service.
This could be for the wider community, within and outside St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, and it could reflect another side of the season.
“Lots of us struggle with the holidays, for a variety of reasons,” Wheatley said in an interview earlier this month. She’s seen it a lot: The loss of a friend, a family member, a goal or a job makes this time of year far less than joyful.
A Blue Christmas service, Wheatley felt, could be a kind of salve: a time to light a candle, recite a psalm, write one’s own prayer.
“It lets us be real,” she said, “in the presence of God, and real in the presence of each other.”
This Friday night on the winter solstice, Wheatley and St. Andrew’s will host the fourth Blue Christmas service. The 7 p.m. gathering is open to anyone, Wheatley said, and it will be low key, with a few songs — “O Little Town of Bethlehem” and “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear” — to begin the longest night of the year.
Wheatley, a woman with sea-blue eyes and a warm handshake, this weekend marks her fourth anniversary as the priest welcoming Episcopalians — and newcomers — to both St. Andrew’s in Port Angeles and to St. Swithin’s Mission in Forks. She goes out to the West End every other Sunday afternoon to St. Swithin’s, which like St. Andrew’s, has a variety of ministries, from simple potluck suppers to support of the Caring Place Shoe Box Drive.
It happened to be a boy named Andrew who introduced Wheatley to her path toward priesthood.
She was a physical therapist, a resident of Great Falls, Mont., where she and her husband, Doug, were bringing up two boys.
The Wheatleys weren’t a church-going family. But their younger son Andrew, 11 at the time, became interested in Christianity, and his mother was open-minded enough to go exploring with him.
And so “’A little child shall lead us’ was very true in our case,” Wheatley said.
This exploration bore fruit. Andrew grew up, made plans for college — after Wheatley decided to make the biggest change of her life.
She closed her physical therapy practice, gave up her income and moved to Sewanee, Tenn., to the Episcopal seminary at the University of the South. While she studied for two years in Tennessee, Doug and Andrew stayed in Great Falls.
Wheatley remembers well the days before she moved away.
Her husband was “mystified,” she said, much like others in the family. She had loved her work as a physical therapist.
Yet the Wheatleys moved forward on faith. It’s not easy to explain how they made this transition.
Even this priest-to-be asked herself, “You did what?” after she left her home state of Montana for the school in Sewanee.
Then and now, Wheatley said, she simply has to trust her soul.
After earning her Master of Divinity degree, Wheatley was ordained and given her first assignment, to St. Mark’s in Havre, Mont.
In 2008, she was assigned to St. Andrew’s in Port Angeles, and with their two sons grown and gone, the Wheatleys made a new start.
The couple, married 37 years now, find their new home town suits them fine.
“The first time I saw a starfish at Salt Creek [County Park], I said, ‘Oh, my God, I live here,’” Wheatley recalled. “This is quite a place of wonder for us.”
This week, the Wheatleys’ son Andrew, now 26, is coming to visit. His brother Brian, 28, who works for a Great Falls television station, will join them later in December.
Doug works in the parts department at Koenig Chevrolet Subaru in Port Angeles and serves as an usher and greeter at St. Andrew’s Sunday services.
And through activities such as the Sunday Adult Forum and Monday night discussion groups, and the Rite 13 program for youth — modeled after the Jewish bar mitzvah — his wife leads the spiritual and cultural community at
their church.
In these weeks leading to Christmas, Wheatley is acknowledging the feelings of flux and uncertainty in the nation and world.
This is the season of Advent, when we are about to enter a new era, she said in her Dec. 2 sermon. Amidst Mayan calendar and other prophecies of the end times, we can open our hearts to a new beginning.
“Our business is here: to delight in and protect this precious world and see the Divine all around us,” Wheatley said.
“The only calendar we need be concerned about is this new year we are entering, and how we will live it.”
She then noted a website, The Advent Conspiracy (www.AdventConspiracy.org).
“It was started several years ago by dissatisfied Christians who learned that Americans spend $450 billion on Christmas presents. The Los Angeles Times noted in 2008 that the cost of eradicating hunger worldwide would cost $300 billion over 10 years. The Advent Conspiracy then wonders what would it would be like,” Wheatley added, “if we conspired to buy less, give more and love each other.”
2013 may well bring historic events to St. Andrew’s and other churches across Washington state. The Episcopal Church years ago authorized a liturgy for blessing same-sex unions, and now that same-sex marriage is legal here, “each clergyperson and each congregation will be working out what’s right for them,” in terms of wedding ceremonies at their parishes.
“I’m sure we’ll have requests,” said Wheatley. And these weddings “will be a very good thing.”
Wheatley again extended her hand to those who are feeling adrift at Christmas time.
The Blue Christmas service, she said, is a time “to sit in the presence of other people who are also struggling, who don’t have answers; who have their own sorrows and burdens to bear. When we share each other’s burdens, it makes them a little lighter.
“This is a season,” she added, “that is filled with hope — not magic.” The Blue Christmas, in a church bedecked in resplendent blue, “doesn’t sugarcoat what is going on in our lives.
“Just come. Nobody stops you at the door. You don’t have to sign up for anything.
“Think of it,” Wheatley said, “as a gift to yourself.”
