Reverend Ann, that is to say, Anne Barker, author extraordinaire

The other car in the shop, she is forced, forced, to drive the sports car… Vroom. Coming on her thirtieth wedding anniversary with chic blue fingernails to match her cobalt blue convertible, Doc Martins, hair dyed magenta; she is a veritable character of a vicar with the collar on straight.

Ann is the other pastor in our little circuit. She’s the woman in charge of the Deepings church, and the Deepings St. Nicholas church, which was, until very recently, the longest village in England. Colin is the supervisory minister, retiring in another six months, and he takes Bourne and Thurlby, filling in the speaking docket with a substantial number of stewards and lay ministers. Colin used to be an accountant until ten years ago, and Ann a music teacher.

We meet Ann at one of the schools we visit. Since the Anglican Church is still a governmentally-supported institution, schools are required to have singing/teaching time involving God and love and such. We pantomime the story of Jesus turning water into wine. Ann tells is with Bernie, a St. Bernard puppet, on her arm, and I play Jesus, Ryan the wedding feast guy; Ann is both narrator and Mary. The kids are tiny, though, elementary-schoolers, and to perform the story with historical accuracy the kids would probably have to get on each others’ shoulders to pour the water into the large, imaginary jars. We are looking for fervor, though, fervor by which the kid volunteers pour the water and shake it around, and in fervency they get a C.

Ann is versatile, inspiring, and refreshing. Though both of her kids are older than us, she welcomes us into her house and shows me books upon books upon books, for we are both nerds. Her husband, Mike, is a nerd as well—that is to say, we are marvelously interested in things that, like early Methodist history or data projectors as is this case, may not seem marvelous or interesting to others who are missing out; though, I confess, even I am missing out on data projectors—Mike has stylishly unkempt hair and a short, gray beard that seems to turn smiles into full-face affairs. He is also a pastor.

Perhaps what endears me to Ann most is her wonderfully creative character. I never want to be labeled easily. I want to be that suit that fits multiple occasions. I want to be a layered cheesecake made of things you never thought would go together. I want to faux paxs into voilas!. I want the Dewey Decimal System to hate my opus, sending people all over the library to piece it together. I say this because, apart from all of Ann’s distinctiveness, the wall around their staircase is full of the colorful covers of her fifteen—fifteen!—pre-Victorian historical romance novels that she has published in the last ten years. There is no passion that is wasted, even if it seems so at first.