MEMORIES OF LI TIM-OI - Lambeth Palace, 30 April 2007

A hundred years ago a baby was about to be born in the fishing village of Aberdeen on Hong Kong island. Its gender was not known. Boy babies were highly prized. At that time, in that culture, a bowl of ash could be at hand to smother unwanted new-born girls. The baby who was born on 5 May 1907 was wanted. Her Christian father, a doctor turned headteacher, valued his new daughter and called her Tim-Oi, 'Much Beloved'. That decision began a chain of events which has changed the Church.

Tim-Oi completed her primary schooling at 14, but her five brothers and 2 sisters meant there were no funds for further schooling until she was 21. She left school aged 27. While a student she joined an Anglican church, and at her baptism took the Christian name Florence, because her birth-month, May, is a month of flowers, and because she admired Florence Nightingale.

In 1931 she was at the ordination in Hong Kong cathedral of an English deaconess. The Chinese preacher asked if there was a Chinese girl also willing to sacrifice herself for the Chinese church. She prayed: 'God, would you like to send me?' That call never left her. In 1934 she started a four year course at Union Theological College in Canton, where her New Testament tutor was Geoffrey Allen, later to be Bishop of Derby, England. Her family couldn't afford the college fees which were paid by the Anglican church. While at college she led a team of students rescuing the casualties of Japanese carpet bombing, and narrowly escaped being a casualty herself.

Time does not allow to tell her full story: of her licence to preside for two years at Holy Communion in the absence of a priest in Macau; of the bishop brought up in a Tractarian [High Church] vicarage who was not happy with lay celebration and ordained her a Priest of God on 25 January 1944, because God had clearly shown that He had already given her the gift of priesthood. After the War, pressured by what I call a 'Purple Guard', to the dismay of the Bishop, she resigned her licence as a Priest, but not her Holy Orders. She was put in charge of a parish near Vietnam, and there she started a large maternity home to ensure that new-born girls were not smothered at birth. Her witness to the value of every child, girl and boy, made many friends for Jesus - making friends for Jesus was her mission in life. But also she showed that 'It Takes ONE Woman' to change the culture of her community.

With her clear calling to serve her God for the rest of her life, we cannot imagine how hard it must have been for 30 years in Maoist China not to be able to fulfil that calling openly! She told me that she dare not consort with those whom she knew were Christians lest she get them into trouble. I asked her how she then worshipped. She replied: "I just went up to a mountain to pray. Nobody knew !" Under the pressure of brain-washing, she contemplated suicide, but the Holy Spirit reminded her of her priesthood, and her commitment to serve God all her life.

The Bamboo curtain eventually lifted. Christian ministers received their back pay from the government, but, when she finally got permission to visit her family in Toronto, I'm told she left behind her savings and her pension rights. She gave them to good causes in China. Her family and others supported her in Toronto, but then she gave the Movement for the Ordination of Women in England £5000. She once said that Christianity was the gift of the West to the East, and her ordination was a gift from the East to the West.

Very few of you here now were in Westminster Abbey in January 1984 when we gathered with her to celebrate the 40th anniversary of her priesting. During the Peace, she asked where I was. It was then that I met her for the first time - met her consciously that is: we may have met when I was a toddler. After another celebration in Sheffield Cathedral, she stayed with us and preached in Bolton Parish Church - not a congregation that welcomed new-fangled notions. Out of the experience of her own suffering, she knew the truth of her chosen text: "Having loved his own, he loved them unto the end." I asked her to write my father's Chinese name so that it is her calligraphy on the cover of his biography. Much more important she came here to Lambeth Palace to visit Archbishop Robert Runcie, then unconvinced whether women should be ordained. After meeting her he told Archbishop Ted Scott: "Who am I to say whom God can or cannot call ?" 'It Takes ONE Woman' to change the thinking of the Church.

She suffered from the Purple Guards who would not recognise her orders. She suffered from the Red Guards who made her cut up her vestments with scissors. Yet as Ted Scott, the Primate of Canada, related on a TV programme: "She was never bitter, never harboured any resentment against those who caused her suffering. She had the resources to forgive all that had been done to her." She made no claims for herself. She didn't want to be famous. Her only concern was for others, not least that women should be fully valued by the Church and in society.

After she died, Rita her sister asked us to found the Li Tim-Oi Foundation and generously primed its pump. What it does is to offer help to women who, like Tim-Oi, lack the funds for their education, women who are called to serve the church and their communities, and need to be equipped to fulfil their vocations - like those whose stories are on other pages of this site

Canon Christopher Hall, Hon Secretary, Li Tim-Oi Foundation

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