When the Sartorial meets the Sacerdotal

My young(ish) clergy women friends and I were all a-flutter last week at the news that one of our own would be featured on an episode of What Not to Wear.

I know the show has its detractors, but I, for one, raced to set my DVR.

There was a lot to love about the episode- not least was an honest discussion of where fashion fits in, in a general way, in the life of a Spiritual Leader. The first women were ordained in my denomination on my 2nd birthday, but there is still a significant struggle to be taken seriously as leaders. (My local religious bookseller continues to inquire if I am the ministers’ wife, every time I buy Sunday School materials there!) So Yes! by all means, lets talk about the fact that the culture in which we work and move has certain expectations about how women might dress in order to visually identify themselves as leaders within the community of faith. Let’s talk about how, if we fail to meet cultural expectations, our qualifications and contributions can be more easily overlooked by colleagues, larger governing bodies, and parishioners alike. And yet, if we succeed too well at conforming to cultural standards, we are accused of vanity and paying excessive attention to unimportant earthly frippery.

Looking around my (mostly male) colleagues at a meeting this morning, there were any number of styles of dress represented- formal black suits, sports coats, dockers & Sweaters, jeans… all of these ‘looks’ were completed with a collared shirt. Take pretty much any fashion ‘look’ for men, replace “shirt and tie” with “shirt and collar” and boom, you have a well-dressed cleric.

It has long seemed to me that the cultural expectations of women in professional dress are significantly harder to adapt to clerical clothing. Not impossible, mind you, but harder. Witness the spring line at Reitmans, a retailer that prides themselves on being “designed for real life”. Behold the many many variations on “basic neutral trouser and colourful interesting top”.

So I thought Stacy and Clinton had a brilliant opportunity with Emily to talk about how to make their “fashion rules” work for people who, for whatever reason, find that “neutral trouser and blingy top” doesn’t work. Off the top of my head: clergy, nursing moms, people for religious, cultural or personal reasons prefer a more modest neckline than is often readily available, women with mastectomies or scars… there’s lots of reasons why not to wear a low-cut colourful blouse.

I felt like WNTW came so close, and then missed the mark. They did a little “how to put together an outfit” tutorial for Emily. (Actually they handed her a notepad and told her to take notes, which I found an irritatingly infantalizing way to treat a grown woman in a trusted position of authority within the community that knows her well).
1 basic + 1 interest piece + 1 completer piece = outfit.

Fine. But then there was room to say, OKAY, this black clerical shirt is always going to be your basic. If you look around you can find one in some other colours, but lets face it, this is never going to be the “interest” portion of your fabulous professional ensemble. THEN they could have talked about finding trousers with texture or pattern or interest, or great jackets, or jewellery, or something.

But no. They made Emily a custom clerical dicky- a signal to the rest of us that without the resources of a nationally syndicated tv show at our disposal, there’s just no way to walk that razor’s edge between “young and hip” and “professional and put together”. And then they put her in a scoop neck blouse overtop of that dicky. So the message became more like “here is the uniform. If you are sufficiently young and conventionally attractive, you can and will find a way to wear the uniform. And if you are not, then we were never talking to you in the first place”.

To say nothing of how they kept coming back to her single status, and the primary importance of signalling sexual availability at all times. Not that there’s anything wrong with a young woman wanting to dress like a sexy young woman. But between the “looking holy for work” and “putting it out there” in the off hours, the Madonna/Whore split was just far too much for my little brain to encompass, and surely far too much to ask any one young woman to incarnate.

I am fairly newly convinced that there are some really good reasons for clergy women to bother paying attention to what we wear- not least being that we are called to minister precisely with and through and in these earthly vessels. We are incarnated beings. We have bodies, and they don’t need to be hidden beneath shapeless or ill-fitting clothing. Bodies aren’t things to be ashamed of (at any size!) And clergy bodies in particular stand before the gathered community and represent something beyond ourselves to that community. We embody what we believe in a particular way, when we claim a place as ordained leaders. And in a massive variety of every-day choices– including the choice of how we dress those earthly vessels each day– we make a declaration of what we believe about ourselves and our creator. Or so it seems to me.

Clearly, I was hoping for too much from an hour of makeover television.

Food- certainly not poison

This started off as a comment on Michelle’s post, Food isn’t poison. But then I thought, “Dude (because I call myself that, because my kid has been watching a lot of Finding Nemo) you can’t go spouting off Eucharistic Theology on other people’s blogs, that’s just rude. Spout that shit on your own blog.”

So.

Michelle wrote:

So, if food isn’t poison, and if it isn’t medicine, what is it? It’s food. It’s sunlight and air and soil and water and love, in edible form. It’s every creature that’s gone before you, and the thing you’ll be to those who come after.

And that right there is pretty consistant with my Eucharistic Theology- the way I understand this strange symbolic feast of styrofoam and sips that lies so close to the heart of my faith. In this meal that remembers-and-makes-present the person of Jesus Christ we become connected to every person who has shared it and every person who will share it. And I believe that this is part of what Jesus was saying when he told his friends, “When you eat food and drink wine, think of me and the things we talked about”.

I think its incredibly important that the physical stuff (I think ‘creature’ is actually the academic term here) that Christians use in this ritual is bread and wine. We take the stuff that is all God’s doing- the seed and the sun and the rain. And we mix it with some stuff that is all human endeavour- the milling and the baking and the fermenting. And we end up with these creatures of bread and wine that in turn become a symbol and sign of the intermixedness (now I’m just making words up) of Divine and human endeavours. Cool.

On top of that, Michelle points out that that grain and those grapes are in their turn made of the stuff of previous life- they have incorporated the physical stuff of other created things in a grand and wonderful carbon recycling scheme that is at once both mystical and utterly mundane.

I’ve preached the same thing about the water of baptism- how it has been everywhere. But yes. YES! It is also true of the creatures of bread and wine that we (I) bless in the eucharist.

Connections. With God. With each other. Across time and space. That is what I believe about those wee strange little discs made of flour and water in a way that causes them to in no way resemble actual bread.

But as Fillyjonk said about conceptual metaphors, metaphor is a minefield. And the food-as-interconnectedness-and-relationship-and-a-sign-of-all-that-is-right-with-the-world has become a pretty shaky place to hang a concept of God as interconnectedness and relationship and a sign of all that is right with the world.

I fear for what we (I) can proclaim through this sacramental meal in a culture where food is understood as medicine and/or poison. Because the presence of God is, I believe, also neither of these things.

In which I do NOT give medical advice on the internet

Nope. No advice here. This is just a story about us. And I tell it because when I googled some words, I did not find any stories like ours. So gather round, parents, and hearken to the tale that I tell…

Two weeks ago my 20-month-old developed an ear infection. No big deal. Ear infections happen. We saw a doc. We got some antibiotics. After just a few doses the pain stopped. We kept taking the antibiotics because that’s just how we roll.

At the end of our course of amoxicillin, Miss Monkey developed a raging diaper rash. Ouch! Poor miss monkey.
Here’s a link to what a yeast diaper rash looks like. Not fun. Something churned in the back of my brain, “hey, antibiotics can kill off natural flora and trigger yeast rashes, can’t they?” And the answer to that is yes. yes indeed they can. It was pretty bad, and causing her a lot of pain. After a night where she just couldn’t get comfortable enough to sleep, we planned to get some topical anti-fungal cream to help her fight it.

By morning, she had spots on her belly. “Hey” went that same part of my brain, “didn’t those yeast diaper rash websites mention satellite lesions that can appear away from the primary site? That’s probably what those are.” Off she went to Day Care. By end of day, she had spots ALL FREAKING OVER. All over. Belly, arms, legs, FACE. “OH MY GOD! SHE HAS A DIAPER RASH ON HER FACE!!”. Granted, she’s really short. Her face and diaper region are not that far apart. But. Dude! HER FACE! Where did I put that anti-fungal cream! We gotta get this thing under control!!

So, a night-time application of the cream. And the next morning. And the next night. And the main diaper rash is getting better. But the satellite spots are still there, on legs, her arms, her belly, her FACE. So we call our provincial government’s “So sorry our single-payer insurance system makes it impossible for anyone to go into family practice and make enough money to pay off their student loans but instead of addressing the doctor shortage here’s a phone number where you can talk to a registered nurse” hotline. The RN heard me out, and mentioned something that I did NOT manage to find when using search terms such as: baby antibiotic diaper rash yeast.

Non Allergic Amoxicillin Rash. Non contagious. Non itchy. Non painful. Non contra-indicative of future use of amoxicillin. And not related to the diaper rash, except that they were both connected to the course of antibiotics.

So, of you got here through a search engine and are asking yourself “How am I such a terrible care-giver that this diaper rash has gotten so out-of-control as to have spread to my baby’s FACE?!?!” then maybe dial back the parental guilt a little bit.

Or don’t. Because I am not giving medical advice over the internet, here. I’m totally not qualified for that.

Into the Jungle

Monday is my day off, which is pretty standard for clergy around here. Or rather, Monday is my day off from paid work. It is also the day that my kids are not in day care, and we hang out together.

The last few weeks have been out-of-the-ordinary, what with Christmas, and then a stomach bug working its way through the family, and then spending last Monday sitting in the ER waiting for an official diagnosis of “Ear Infection” and a prescription for antibiotics.

The plan yesterday was only slightly out-of-the-ordinary. We often go to the Y, so recently ear-infection-free Grace would hang out at KidsKare, while Desperate-to-burn-off-energy Ruth and I would, as usual, hit the pool. But then KidsKare was full, and Ruth was entranced by the goings-on at Preschool Drop-in, which happens in the large glass-walled gym right by the entrance. So in we went.

There is something sort of wonderful about PDI. It is pretty much as structured as it sounds. There’s a gym, and a big mattress, and some balls, and some ride-in/on toys, a sign-in sheet, and 2-3 YMCA staffers. It is a bastion of that fast-disappearing staple of childhoods gone by… free play. And it is sort of wonderful watching kids figure out how to play together.

Highlights for me were the kid who pushed Grace in the toy car when she couldn’t make it go herself, and the little boy who solemnly handed me the two ribbons he’d been playing with, saying “I have to go now, so you can play with these”. Also, Ruth built a pretty spectacular tower, despite the clear handicap of having to share communal blocks with a kid who was much more into knocking towers down.

Over and over again, I see at PDI the same thing that I love about McPlayland- fast food play areas. The kids are, in the overwhelming majority, pretty good to each other. I see big kids looking out for littler kids. I see strangers exchange names and suddenly become, for the fleeting time that they are together, bestest friends. I see kids negotiating how they are going to share toys and share space and take turns and find the balance between more active and more quiet play. And I see most of it happening with minimal adult involvement. The PDI staffers seem to be there primarily there to prevent escapes, and make bathroom runs- rather than micromanage toddler relationships. AWESOME. (In fact, when I’m there, the only drama I see is when parents get involved in their kids’ play with other kids. Like the mom who tried to make her daughter apologize to mine for pushing her in the car. Dude?! My kid LOVED that push. She’s crying about the wall that made it all end!)

As much as I love watching my two beautiful girls make their way in the world- a whole gym-width away from my influence- I also love this reminder that, before we learn any differently, people have this large capacity to be pretty decent to one another.

Be excellent to each other, eh.

This is Not a Resolution

But I’m going to try and look the part more often.
(Some well-chosen Christmas gift certificates will help with that)

Drab, aggressively sexless, sartorially clueless people in any profession make a statement by their very presence, and that statement is not a good one. Some of the non-verbal statements such appearance makes are:

1. I do not want anyone to look at me.
2. I don’t deserve attention; being noticed is something I am not prepared to accept and a responsibility I do not want.
3. I am harmless; in fact, I am passive. The world is happening around me and I hope to be invisible in it.
4. I don’t care. I occupy an alternative universe where appearance doesn’t matter — and if you notice that I am frumpy, it must be because you are not as holy as I am.
5. (similar) You should be enlightened enough not to be distracted by my terrible clothing and ill-fitting undergarments: what’s the matter with you? This isn’t my problem, but yours.
6. Please do not mistake me for a leader. Isn’t it obvious from my demeanor and my attire that I have no desire to represent any ideal higher than that of personal comfort? If there were camera crews outside covering today’s event, my on-camera appearance would immediately communicate to the public that nothing of real importance happens in here.

You Win!

The “I wouldn’t change a single thing about you, my Beloved” Award

You wouldn’t think twice about saying it to you kid, would you?
This year, you resolved to say it to yourself…

My Mom Rocks Advent

I’ll freely admit- I rarely give my Mom the credit she richly deserves.

Like many mother-daughter relationships, we are simultaneously too different, and too much alike. She can push my buttons like no one else on earth (except, of course, for my daughter). And I hers, I imagine. I have sometimes doubted that she liked me- but never that she loved me.

Sometimes, I just have to step back and give that lady her due. It’s “Christmas List” time- she keeps the list, distributes ideas among her children, and generally makes sure that everybody has something to be happy about under the tree.

This is her list for Christmas 2009:

Dear [Eldest], [Middle], and [Youngest],

I have sent some clothes to Valu Village and still have three closets more,
So I need no others, nor do I seek furnishings or decor,
I have all I want and all I need, so making this list is hard,
but lucky for you it is easy to fill, quite simple in that regard;
Remember the needs in Africa, and the Stephen Lewis Foundation,
Or buy a chicken through World Vision, or books for education,
Think of the wildlife that are perishing, that your grandchildren may never see
And give to World Wildlife Federation; do these in the name of me.
As for something to open on Christmas Day, tho’ you are busy husbands and wives
I’d enjoy some actual photos of families, living their busy lives.
In a book, with labels, and in tangible form, pictures are always great,
[Surname]s* and [Surname]s* and [Surname]s* galore, their houses, their garden gate,
Their workplaces, play places, family time, when energized or tired,
So I can look and see what your lives are like, any old time I’m inspired.
This is my list, for Christmas ‘09, you need not spend time in the stores,
Stay away from the ‘flu; I’ve sent my list to you, now please send me yours!

A blessed Advent to all!

All my love,
M.

So I’m just gonna take some time this morning to appreciate the generous, doggerel-writing awesomeness that is my mom. Over here on my anonymous blog where there is no danger of her ever finding out that I think she is (at times) very very cool.

*True thing- All these Surnames are the same. I don’t know which is more statistically unlikely: that three sisters would all meet and fall in love with guys with the same (granted, quite common) last name? That three sisters would all take their husband’s name after marriage? Or that two of those sisters would stay happily married for over a decade until the third found her soulmate?

Moments

I keep having these days where I realize how completely not ready I am to be the mother of a curious almost-4-year-old.

At bedtime, we have this litany of all the blankets on her bed, and where they came from. They include one I made for her, and one made by a friend. We say, “and this blanket is from Mary. (She made it for me) She made it for you. Do you know why? (Because she loved me even before I was born) Because she loved you. Even before you were born.”

Except that my friend Mary, who was a constant presence in my life in the years before Ruth’s arrival, had moved away. And Ruth hadn’t seen her since her first birthday party. And Mary stopped by while she was in town last week.

So, at bedtime, the conversation changed.

And this blanket is from Mary.
(Mary is that tall boy)
my internal dialogue will be represented in italics. What? Mary is a… tall, skinny woman. Okay. Um.
Mary is not a boy. Mary is a woman.
(Mary is a boy. Why do you say Mary is a woman?)
Uhhh. There was a time when this would’ve been an easier question for me to answer…
Because Mary says that Mary is a woman. And, Baby, you don’t get to decide for anyone else if they are a boy or a girl. That is for them to decide. What if I decided you were a boy?
(But I’m not a boy, I’m a girl.)
But what if I decided that you are a boy. Because I say so.
(But I’m not a boy! I’m NOT A BOY, MAMA).
No. You are not a boy. And you get to decide for you. But Mary gets to decide for Mary. And I get to decide for me. You don’t get to decide for anybody else if they are a boy or a girl.
oh dear God, what am I doing here? Whatever. In for a penny, in for a pound…
Most people decide to be what their bodies are. But some people with boy bodies decide to be girls. And some people with girl bodies decide to be boys. And nobody else gets to decide for them.
(I have a girl body. And I decide to be a girl)
Me too, Baby. Goodnight, Baby.
(Blankets, Mama)
Ok, [continuing where we left off] and this one is from Mary. She loved you even before you were born.
(SHE loved me, Mama. Because she’s a girl)
Yes, Baby. And this used to be my crayon blanket. But now it is your crayon blanket, to keep you cosy and warm. I love you Baby. Goodnight.
(I love you, Mama).

I don’t really know how to talk about any of this with my kids. I suspect “decide” is the wrong word. I suspect we’ll be back over this ground again. I suspect this is more than she wanted to know. Next time I’ll have to ask her what she thinks makes someone a boy. (And then not laugh at her answer, because she can’t tell delight from derision). I suspect that if I continue with this tack, some day I will cringe mightily as she asks someone who eschews traditional gender markers if they have chosen to be a boy or a girl. (Cringe, and hope that the question is less irritating from a child than from an adult, or that the language of choice makes a difference.)

I’m on uneven and changing ground here. How do I teach her that bodies are all different? Lives are all different? Families are all different? That diversity is a good thing- we are stronger and better with more voices at the table. That other people’s identities are their own to name. And, more importantly, that her identity is hers to name.

Whoever she grows up to be. Even if she changes her mind about the whole ‘being a girl’ thing.

A big load for a small donut

I was talking with some of my colleagues this morning, and some of them were lamenting that they have people who, when they come for a meeting, bring coffee and Timbits. My boss, on the topic: “That’s just not good”.

me: “What’s not good?”
him: “All those Timbits”
me: “Timbits are morally neutral”
him: “And so are guns, but I know to stay away from them. Sure, morally neutral until they are used. The atomic bomb is morally neutral, I suppose.”
me: (after picking up jaw from floor) “You really need to come to the Lenten Study I’m working on”.

First of all- the sudden descent from donuts to weapons? Really?

And also- they really perceive people bringing them food as an aggressive act? Priests? Anglican Priests, for whom the sharing of the Eucharistic meal forms a central act of our faith? For whom presiding over that sacramental sharing-of-food is a central part of our role? Really? People who want to frame a meeting with us in the context of them sharing food with us is somehow a surprise to them? Somehow a problem?

By the end of the day, I wanted to say this to my colleagues*. And maybe I’ve been reading FA blogs too long, because this seems eminently sane to me, but I’m not sure it would have been heard that way.

Do not receive the blessing of abundance as a curse.
If you eat that for which you have no hunger, if you do not eat that for which you do have hunger– do not blame the food for being available. That is too much weight for a little donut to bear.

*and yet, I doubt I’ll be sending a link to my blog out on the Clericus email list.

Fasting from Fasting

A few weeks ago my Parish Council went on a day-long retreat together. It was pretty awesome. In outlining the agenda for the day, the retreat leader made reference to “that activity that lies at the heart of the Kingdom of God: eating together”. I had my little “Ah-HA” moment. It connected with some stuff A Sarah said a while back about the Christian Narrative, and its relation to hunger/satisfaction longing/fulfillment.

I have asked this wise woman to work with me to develop a Lenten bible study, in which we will connect HAES concepts with scriptural stories. It isn’t fully fleshed out yet.

But there’s something there about hunger/thirst/longing being a vehicle that leads us to God, and that when we are culturally conditioned to see hunger as the enemy we lose access to a means of finding God. I’m not sure we can keep denying physical hungers without losing the capacity to know and honour and satisfy spiritual hungers.

And there’s something there about knowing yourself- a connection between self-knowledge and self-acceptance and self-love- something that points back to the title of this Blog, and a celebration of the many, many different images of God in which a community of people are created. The Lenten season is so often devoted to making us aware of how wretched we are. And, I’m not denying that we have the capacity for incredible wretchedness. But we’re not all wretchedness and ick. There is beauty in us, too. Cherishing the beauty that is within us, that God sees in us, seems like a worthwhile Lenten task, too.

This is still in the half-formed thought phase. I’m mostly posting about it to capture some of this before it dissipates from my head altogether. And now my kid is declaring that it is time to go to the Y. So the rest will just have to dissipate. Presumably, if it’s worth remembering it’ll come back on its own eventually.