26.08.2014
Abigail Sines – Approaching Intern Year in Glenageary with Excitement
On Sunday September 21 five new Deacons will be ordained in Christ Church Cathedral. They are Kevin Conroy, David Martin, Alan Breen, Abigail Sines and Cathy Hallissey and they will be Intern Deacons in parishes in Dublin and Glendalough where they will work until next summer. Each has written a piece about themselves and each day this week they will be profiled in turn.
Abigail Sines (St Paul’s, Glenageary)
“My journey into the Church of Ireland has been by a somewhat unconventional path. Originally from Hampton, a small city in southeastern Virginia in the United States, as a child I was fascinated with Britain and Ireland. These were the places that populated our fairy tales and legends where great adventures took place! I certainly never imagined that God would bring me here to live and serve on a long–term basis. When I had grown up and left the fairy tales and legends behind I completed my university studies in international relations and Chinese, with hopes of a career as a diplomat in the US Foreign Service.
“After graduation I spent a year in China teaching English. I then undertook postgraduate studies at the University of Hawai`i, continuing with my academic interest in China and eventually taking up a position at the East–West Centre, the Honolulu–based organisation that had sponsored my studies. I was able to launch and develop a leadership development program for young women professionals from around the region, and I also assisted annually on 2–3 programs bringing together mid–career journalists from around the region to dialogue on current issues. I got to meet people from around the world and travel to all sorts of places—it was truly my dream job! But as I approached my sixth year in the job I could sense a change was coming. Through prayer I began to get a distinct sense that God was calling me to leave the job, to leave Hawai`i and to do something that I had never seriously entertained before—to study theology.
“If I was going to make a drastic change, I was going to make it drastically indeed. Through my process of prayer, Ireland stayed on my heart. I had visited twice as a tourist on my own, hearkening back to that childhood fascination, but to come here to study seemed like an impossibility in every sense. I didn’t even know where to start. Yet, as usually happens, God took me down the path one step at a time. In 2008 I began studies at Belfast Bible College and completed an MTh there in 2010. When I began at the Bible College it was with an interest in academic theology, and a decided dis–interest in any kind of ordained ministry. I had long been an active church ‘volunteer’, part of children’s, discipleship, and worship ministries, but the thought of myself as a minister seemed right out of the question. However, that changed mid–way through my course and it seemed that all my previous assumptions about myself and my life were being taken apart piece by piece! Though from a non–denominational background, I began attending St. Colman’s, Dunmurry, in south Belfast, and the sense of call that had started with the guidance to leave my job seemed to be getting more specific the further along I journeyed and the more I sought God.
“Serving in the Church of Ireland seemed to me, at the outset, a remote possibility but I discussed it with my rector and began the process of discernment. Though I expected to be told ‘no’, at each stage I kept getting a ‘yes’ so I carried on right through to the Selection Conference in 2011. My mother took ill that year so I returned to the US; she passed away later that year. I deferred the start of my studies in order to look after family matters but I continued to hang on to the call that I had sensed from God and that had been confirmed by the encouragement of so many around me. It was thrilling when I returned to Ireland in 2012 to begin at CITI.
“I experience an odd mix of peace and excitement as I approach my internship year and this continuously unfolding adventure with God. I look forward to getting to know the rector and people of Glenageary parish and serving there. I hope that in some way my eclectic background and rather roundabout journey towards ordained ministry will bring something that will be a blessing to the parish.”