Rev. Dr. Ruth Snyder

Stole Text

Rev. Dr. Ruth Snyder

United Church of Christ
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

Buffalo, NY

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My Pastor shared the story of her journey, and I was so moved that I decided to make a stole and donate it in her honor.
Ruth was a Lutheran minister who found it necessary to leave the church when she fell in love with another woman. She has since become a minister with the United Church of Christ and our congregation was privileged to call her as a Co-Pastor.
With her permission, I am donating the stole to the Shower of Stoles Project as a way of honoring her and her story.
As I thought about a design concept, I was struck by the similarities between her personal journey and our experiences as we follow the church calendar. So, I designed the stole following the colors and seasons of the church year.
In her book, Things Seen and Unseen: A Year Lived in Faith, Nora Gallagher follows the church calendar as a way to illustrate that "the road to the sacred is paved with the ordinary," so I used excerpts from her book to help explain each section of the stole.
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ADVENT
The swirling blue and gold fabric represents your formative years. Your faith is being formed with help from your parents, teachers, Pastors, and Sunday School teachers. Ever present through your journey is the Holy Spirit (gold ribbon).
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CHRISTMAS
The Lutheran Rose honors the Lutheran Church for helping you find your passion and love for Christ, and the stole symbol represents your ordination. The white background invokes the same Christmas feelings of hope and promise for your life, as you enter the ministry.
"They, too, were in the midst of something being called of them and of hearing a voice that would lead them along right pathways and stretch into time."
 
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EPIPHANY
Though a design was not included in the stole to represent Epiphany, it is important to include it here. Surely you experienced your own epiphany...
"I want to bring my whole self to church. I don't want to have to leave a part of my history or a piece of myself at the door."
 
"The church was originally designed, I think, to shape itself to us, not to force us to shape ourselves to it."
 
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LENT
The dark purple of the stole represents the period of time when you were forced to choose between two loves... your church or your new-found love.
"What was asked of Jesus is what is asked of us: that we give up illusion - its false promises and its addicting inertia - and come to our senses. That we, as Vaclav Havel would say, 'live within the truth.'"
 
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GOOD FRIDAY
Other than the continuing gold ribbon (Holy Spirit) there is no embellishment on the black cloth. You contemplate leaving the ministry. This was your rejection. This was your wilderness. This was your moment of feeling abandoned. This was your tomb... "because of the way the world is organized."
"The Eleventh Station:  Jesus is nailed to the cross. Jesus was crucified, not because of a whim, but because of the way the world is organized. It rejected Jesus and eliminated him. But it is God's will to establish the Kingdom in the midst of creation. God does not cease to will it."
 
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EASTER
The Holy Spirit is working miracles in your life. You now have a new calling to an open and inclusive church. You can be with your love openly and freely. The dove represents your faith - stronger than ever, and the heart and infinity sign illustrate your love.
"They stood outside the tomb and endured its emptiness. Then they ran outside to tell the others. They gave all they had for something new."
 
"Out of the chaos and trauma of death, something new is written or revealed. Jesus walked through the curtain, into the Reality blazing behind it, a place he had grasped and apprehended all his life. Then, because he lived fully in hope, fully in love, something happened to him. Nothing kept him, nothing held onto him, the past didn't weigh him down. He returned a more coherent, more real, carrying Reality with him, in a final act of love. The resurrection means that nothing is hopeless anymore."
 
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PENTECOST
You are called to the Church of the Nativity, United Church of Christ. You are no longer "passing through territories not your own." How you are ours... we are yours... we are His.
"Pilgrims are persons in motion - passing through territories not their own," writes Richard Niebuhr, "seeking something we might call completion, or perhaps the word clarity will do as well, a goal to which only the spirit's compass points the way."
 
"This is the craving of the Holy Spirit, the driving passionate voice. It is her hand set against my back. I see now. It is not finished, she whispers. It did not end with the one on the cross."
 
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ORDINARY TIME
Now you are in ordinary time - in your own life - bringing your whole self to church - living out the gift of the Holy Spirit. What was extraordinary is now ordinary. (Or is it?)
The final symbol - the Alpha and Omega cross reminds us: "'I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the ending,' saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty."
"In most of the other church seasons, we trace the life of Jesus - from expected arrive to resurrection, Advent to Eastertide. But in Ordinary Time we are in our own lives, living out the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost."
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"Come now, disturbing Spirit of our God, breathe on these bodily things and me us one body in Christ. Open our graves, unbind our eyes and name us here; touch and heal all that has been buried in us that we need not cling to our pain but may go forth with power to release resurrection in the world.  -- Janet Morley

Contribution Story

The letter that accompanied the stole:
My name is Linda Tomsen and I designed and created this stole for my Pastor, the Rev. Dr. Ruth Snyder. Ruth shared the story of her journey with me and I was so moved. I decided to create the stole and donate it in her honor.
Ruth was a Lutheran Minister with the LCA/ELCA for 23 years. She found it necessary to leave the ministry with that church when she fell in love with another woman. Ruth has since become a minister with the United Church of Christ and our congregation, The Church of the Nativity in Buffalo, New York, was privileged to call her as a Co-Pastor in May 2010.
As I thought about a design concept, I was struck by the similarities between her personal journey and our experiences as we follow the church calendar. So, I designed the stole following the colors and seasons of the church year.
In Things Seen and Unseen: A Year Lived in Faith, Nora Gallagher also organized her book according to the seasons of the church, so I used excerpts from this wonderful book to help explain each section of the stole.

Archival Record

Stole Number: 1141
Honoree(s): Rev. Dr. Ruth Snyder
Donor(s): Linda Tomsen
Geography: Buffalo, New York (USA)
Faith Tradition: Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
Donation Date: 2011

Citation

“Rev. Dr. Ruth Snyder,” LGBTQ Religious Archives Network, accessed November 27, 2024, https://exhibits.lgbtran.org/items/show/1044.