Monday, May 23, 2011

Rev. Constance F. Parvey 1931-2011

We give thanks for the life of Rev. Constance Fern Parvey, who died on Saturday, May 21, 2011. One of the first women students at Harvard Divinity School and the first woman ordained in the Lutheran church in New England, Connie served as associate pastor of UniLu and Lutheran chaplain at MIT from 1972 to 1978, and returned to the Lutheran-Episcopal Ministry at MIT as Lutheran chaplain from 1996 until her retirement in 2001. Our thoughts and prayers are with the worldwide community of friends who grieve her death, even as we give thanks to God for her extraordinary life.

Please see Connie's page of the UniLu website for more information, and share your memories here.

11 comments:

  1. I am greatly grieved to hear of Connie's passing. She was my dear friend and mentor. We shared Finnish genes and called ourselves "Finnish sisters."

    I met her when I was a student at Augustana College and doing the art editing for frontiers, the Lutheran student magazine. She was on the editorial board while she was a student at Harvard Divinity School. I spent one summer in Cambridge during those years, and she helped me find a place to live and introduced us to everything in her life.

    We continued to be friends through the years. When she was the Chaplain at Madison and I was teaching at the University in Superior, she gave me an exhibition of my art work in the Lutheran Student House. When she was in Los Angeles she helped my sister find her education at the college where Sister Corita was teaching. Much later, when she was recovering from her esophagal cancer operation and I was recovering from a divorce, I lived with her and helped her for a summer. It was a great healing time for us both.

    She came to visit me when I moved to Upper Michigan to teach at Finlandia. My new husband and I spent a week with her in her Vermont summer timeshare place. During the last few years when she began to fade I visited her twice. Our last time alone together was a walk along the wharfs with the seagulls. If only I could manage to do that again, in memory of her. When I left her, I cried with loss. The next time I saw her she had sold her apartment and was living in the assisted living place in Cambridge. I had intended to go to the Museum after our visit, but I could do nothing but walk around the streets feeling bereft. It was our last visit.

    She was an enormous influence in my life. I am very proud to have known her.

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  2. Pastor Brent ChristiansonMay 24, 2011 at 1:48 PM

    Connie was a significant presence in the Madison, Wisconsin campus ministry from 1963-65. Her sensitivity to the interplay between artistic media and Christian faith, her genuine love for the students and her willingness to listen and to offer wise advice left lasting and positive impressions on those who knew her. We were privileged to have her as the preacher at the 90th anniversary celebration of Madison's campus ministry and we were gratified by her ongoing interest in a ministry she had made such an impact on. May she rest in God's mercy.

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  3. Connie was on the candidacy committee of the Metro New York Synod (LCA) when I was a candidate for ordination. I always remembered her as caring and considerate. She was a breath of fresh air. Whenever our paths crossed in the future I always remembered my experiences with her on that committee. She was a wonderful person!

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  4. Alice Otterness Thoresen HoaglundMay 25, 2011 at 5:58 AM

    With sadness I received the news tonight of Connie Parvey's death. She certainly was among the brightest and most gifted in the circle of men and women serving in Campus Ministry from 1955 in various capacities until her retirement in 2001. She lived through many years as a leader among women in the decade(s) leading up to women's ordination as a staff person in Campus Ministry at UniLu Cambridge (1955-70), eventually receiving ordination, serving at the Women's Desk of the World Council of Churches, ministering in a parish and then returning as a Campus Pastor at MIT. The list of various ways in which she contributed to the life of the Lutheran Church and the wider Church does not do justice to the spirit with which she gave herself to her Vocation in the midst of illness and church struggles. Connie was a beautiful woman, a faithful friend, a creative and artistic scholar and a devoted woman of God. Thanks for the way she has touched so many of our lives.

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  5. I was never called to the office of campus ministry, but from the grand stands I often was invited to the playing field of campus ministers (clerical and lay and all) in conference, at retreat, or in program. It was a special delight when such occasions were graced by Connie Parvey's presence and influence. She was, for so many of us, a mentor and tutor in such ministries and a guide as we threaded our paths through fields new to us -- e.g., those involving women in ways which helped them and us enlarge our ministries. She was a pioneer in every zone of work and play which beckoned her.

    At times like this, I like to paraphrase an affirmation of Martin Luther--now to those who mourn and celebrate her: "Under the old dispensation we used to say, 'In the midst of life we are in death.' But under the Gospel we say, 'in the midst of death we are in life.'" Connie, you got to the sphere of realized "new creation" life before we did, but, with you, we also "are in life."

    Marty

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  6. Elizabeth BettenhausenMay 26, 2011 at 6:56 PM

    Connie seemed so much ahead of her time. We had to figure out what vision of the future she had and then be courageous enough to take steps in that journey, even if we didn't quite understand what the price might be. I have no doubt she is still laughing euphemistically.

    Elizabeth

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  7. Connie and I met in 1966 when she headed a writing/TV program for Augsburg College in Minneapolis on issues of the day. After 12 years in Florida and a return to Minnesota, I was her Assistant (thanks to an introduction from neighbor/good friend, Harriet Johnson, and her husband, my high school classmate). That job meant Connie and I were lifelong friends. Later I spent a Christmas in Cambridge with her, and before that a week in Philadelphia after her cancer surgery. She put herself through the paces: walks (that wore me out) and the right eating habits. (I went to the smelly, neighborhood fish market often.) My favorite story about her someone else told. At a meeting of a large group in a long discussion on whether a speaker could come on the dates preferred, Connie left the room, went to a phone, called Europe (believe it was Italy) and came back with the answer. That was Connie! Rest in peace, Connie.

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  8. Brother Benet Tvedten, OSBJune 3, 2011 at 6:25 AM

    The Benedictine monks of Blue Cloud Abbey in South Dakota have received an offering in memory of Pastor Constance Parvey. This comes from a friend of hers who once brought Connie to visit the abbey. I had the joy of meeting her and giving her a tour of the place. Although she was here with Mary Kay O'Hearn only once, I know that I would have appreciated more visits. The ELCA is always welcome here. In fact, several pastors are Oblates of St. Benedict affiliated with our community. May Pastor Connie rest in that peace to which we are
    all called.

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  9. We have a picture of The Good Shepherd in our hallway, drawn by Lilian Habinowski. Looking at it superficially it is Jesus with a sheep in his arms. But examining it more closely Jesus is a woman-shepherd, looking at you, straight and strong, surrounded by sheep and goats. The picture was given to me by Connie Parvey who had got it from Lilian who was inspired to draw it by Connie's remarkably short but fruitful service in her Vermont parish, The Good Shepherd Lutheran Church.

    It is right to remember Connie as the good shepherd. We are reminded of her ordination to ministry. It was the first (and last) ordination taking place in The Memorial Church of Harvard University. It was a sensation. Connie was the first woman ordained in the New England Synod and the church was filled. Krister Stendahl preached and the text was the good shepherd. She became inspired of the possibility given to her to remodel that old imagery with her womanly instincts, her talents and her humanity.

    Connie became my friend, greatly admired and jealously watched. There was so much freedom around her. She traveled around the world picking up friends from exotic countries--Nigeria, Thailand, Chile, Ukraine, Finland, etc. They came to visit her and brought presents. Her apartment was filled with beautiful things. She was intrigued by beauty and did spend money or time with abandon where beauty was concerned. God was revealed.

    My sorrow in losing Connie, my friend for more than fifty years, is that she herself lost so much during her last years. She lost her stunning beauty, her remarkable health, her intellectual mobility, her wide circle of friends, because of her strange illness. Although she and I were in telephone contact we could not understand or hear each other due to speaking and hearing difficulties. Have a good day, and, I love you, were the only messages we understood and exchanged time and time again. Yet Connie loved life and she never wavered. She hungrily received every sign of goodness and she wanted to give it on to others. Her last gifts to her many friends were notes of love and encouragement that she wrote or dictated in her last months. To me she simply wrote Alleluiah! And she gave me the picture of The Good Shepherd.

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  10. The first thought that comes to my mind brings a smile to my face as it always did during our enthusiastic conversations beginning in college, continuing in Cambridge, the Trapp Family Lodge in Stowe, the Greek islands and again back to Cambridge.
    We'd barely begun, when almost without exception, no matter the subject, Connie would exclaim, "But Beva, you are dead wrong" (hence the smile as I'd turn my face away).
    I knew we were in for another of those verbally wild rides, where surprisingly, and almost without exception, we would end with having achieved a consensual position.
    No one can fill that immense void left by the loss of those conversations, but memories of Connie bring a smile to my face and great joy to my heart.

    Bevalee DeGriselles Wunderlich, college roomate and friend

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  11. Connie was truly the model for how to interact with people in a Christian way. As a West Cambridge neighbor who helped clean out her basement, I worked with her under some of the most trying conditions. Yet she was always kind, gracious, and thoughtful - present "in the moment." She treated you with a respect that made you feel like the most important person in the world, despite her own celebrity, which she readily acknowledged while also laughing at it. Connie will be missed by so many people that she has touched through her presence.

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