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I would hate to find out that hair is a bigger issue than feeding the poor. Maybe it is. Maybe we have so much anxiety about what is the right thing to do that we get caught up in details.
So…the right thing to do is what Jesus Christ told us to do. Matthew 28:19…go therefore and make disciples of all the nations…and Luke 6:27…love your enemies. Jesus did not come to remove the law but to fulfill it. And if we are to make disciples and love our enemies, among other things he told us to do, we do it for the love of Him, not out of fear of punishment.
Do those of us called to the tradition of head covering do it out of fear? Do we do it because we are afraid that the Lord will reject us now or at the day of judgment? I don’t think just a headcover is going to save anyone. We wear our hair uncut and our heads covered to serve Him, as a witness, not as a hedge against hell. And that witness needs to be backed up with good behaviour, Christian behaviour, not just rules-keeping and hypocrisy. And the first rule is Love.
A lying, gossiping tongue that does harm, even in the name of good, is not covered by headship. Jesus Christ has no part in a malicious, controlling, spiteful heart. A perfection of dress will not cover that sin! Cleanse your hearts first, before covering your heads. That pristine cap or that beautiful scarf will be a lie if it is not the emblem of your clean heart and soul.
I try to remember that when people see me in my prayer cap and plain dress. Many have gone before me in these clothes, and they wore them humbly and with the grace of God. Why should I betray them and their witness? If this witness is the witness of humility and God’s righteousness, I too must bear that burden, not a spirit of pride and self-righteousness. Hair to your feet and the habit of a nun will not cover a multitude of sins.
Lately I have seen people troubled by gossip, and it is gossip among Christians. Has no one told the offenders that gossip is murder of your neighbour? It is that sinful, that harmful. Gossip keeps your neighbour from living freely amongst her community. It sets up a prison of lies, and forces the victim to leave the community. Yes, it does. It happens all the time. It has happened to me. Gossip slays the love between neighbours and Christians. It is a sword to the heart. No woman under headship should speak ill of her neighbour, or collude to cause another’s pain and isolation. No Christian can remain worthy of His name if she has a sly tongue. She who gossips betrays her headship, and puts her own head to shame, and that shame is not covered by hair or fabric.
Gossip and slander are too often used in traditional and conservative church communities as a means of control. It may be much worse in Christian communities, so-called, than in the general, secular population. This is shame for all Christians, that those of us who claim His name so often do not speak as He taught us. Sister, put a bridle on that tongue, and do not dishonour thy head, who is Christ.
Despite a fine and expensive education, I am still a peasant at heart. I like and need the natural rhythm of the year, the swing and shift of seasons and times. When I was a Baptist child, it seemed that Christmas and Easter came on us suddenly, with just the usual run-up of holiday television specials (not many of them, those years ago), the town tinsel and plywood decorations, and the once-a-year toy department at J.C. Penney’s store. The church didn’t prepare us. Easter was even more of a surprise – sometimes it fell while we were stil covered with snow.
The ultra-Protestantism of the Baptist Church of forty and fifty years ago had long lost the seasons of preparation. There was no anticipation. I rather envied Roman Catholic friends who had periods of fasting (giving up candy, for the most part) and the seasonal lessons in church. They had something to look forward to. I once asked my mother about Lent. Not necessary, she said. And maybe for a struggling family in rural Maine, there wasn’t much to give up anyway.
As an adult in the Episcopal (Anglican) Church, I was introduced to the church calendar. I landed in a church with a priest who was quite Orthodox in outlook, and we kept the seasons and festivals, and were encouraged in the fasts. It was a theological epiphany for me, that self-discipline might have a purpose rather than just keeping the rules!
I need the structure of the calendar. I like it that the seasons of the church match the seasons of our natural year. (Although I wonder how the Southern hemisphere deals with that.) The fasts come at the times when our peasant ancestors didn’t have that much to eat, anyway, and the social structure of the church encouraged prudence and rationing. The long Lenten fast, without meat, eggs or dairy, and carefully guarding the stores of wine and vegetable oils, meant that there was enough for everyone until spring. (Assuming the crops came in and no natural or civic disasters!)
Keeping the feast days of the saints ties us in to their example of faith, a reminder of heaven and glory beyond the mundane world. They are little festivals reflecting the joy of Easter, a foretaste of the feast to come.They keep us living with a foot in each world, in today and what is to be.
Anglicans were once noted for their everyday piety. Anglicans went to daily morning and evening prayer, attended the festivals in their own parishes and neighboring towns, enjoyed the rhythm of the liturgical year along with the natural year. And that daily piety and practice means that we follow the readings of the Bible much more closely. We become immersed in the Word, hearing it daily. It starts to fit together then, and makes more sense. This is one of the problems of modern Biblical illiteracy, why the “God of the Old Testament” seems so different from the “Father in Heaven” of the New Testament, why the gospels seem divorced from the epistles. There’s no continuity because we approach them only once a week, chopped up, disconnected, fragments of what was once a complex picture. We see the interior of the scriptures through the tiny keyhole of Sunday.
Outside of teaching the daily discipline of the lectionary (and I am not always good at keeping it myself) I don`t know what to do about this. House churches, or at least synagogue like gatherings in neighborhoods, led by educated laypeople, might be an answer, if groups could meet at least once a week besides Sunday. Daily prayer in the churches might be another way, if people would make the time to attend. But that may be long lost, with parishes consolidating, sharing priests, tearing down rather than building more churches.
But it would be a good and great undertaking, to restore the calendar to the church that originated it.
I am hoping to hear from more of you. Are you willing to travel to someplace like beautiful Ontario(on Lake Erie, for instance) for a Plain Convocation? Prayer, worship, fellowship, talks,minisries, witnessing, and that horrid modern word – networking! I am in the very early stages of thinking about this. Wo would be willing to work on it? I am not tied down to place, time, or agenda. I think we would have to be near a major bus line, have local workers on hand, and be able to come up with some housing for a weekend.
Pray about this, and turn thy thoughts to the possibility of making a very public statement of inter-church Plainness!
I have to say, there’s nothing like the smell of oatmeal-walnut-raisin cookies baking to make a house very cozy. Thanks, Mother Kay, for a kitchen full of good things waiting to be made into yummy food. And thank you, God, for Mother Kay!
We have been suddenly called to go to Ontario again. I don’t know why. And it’s sometimes hard to trust God right then. But there we are, packing up, ready for the next step. I have to do all the driving now, as well as packing the truck, getting all the supplies together, explaining to Nicholas what’s happening next.
Recent events have left me tired and just a little frustrated and short of temper. I need to spend some time in prayer to cope with all that! I have trouble seeing this as anything but a setback, but in my heart I know that the Lord is providing for us, and giving us a new ministry. In a way, I can’t wait to see what is unveiled.
This will give us time to get some things settled, an opportunity to meet with other Plain people, and the space to develop what is close to our hearts – coming back home and setting up a Christian intentional community, God willing.
God answers prayer, but not always in the ways we expect.
As an Anglican, I am signed on to twice daily liturgical prayer, which I used to keep pretty faithfully. But without the parish setting around me, I sort of strayed from it. That hasn’t stopped me from praying, of course. I just pray somewhat differently, and in different settings.
I don’t sleep well, and never have, a life-long insomniac. Now I know that if the Lord doesn’t grant me sleep, then it is time to pray. (Sometimes I pray for sleep, too.) There’s so much to pray for, our own challenges, as well as remembering the family, the church, those I know are wounded and hurting, those who are ill. I pray while I watch the news – there’s a television here and we watch it judiciously – because it isn’t enough to be a spectator. Watching someone else’s mishap or trouble is voyeaurism unless we can get involved, and we can always get involved in prayer.
Sometimes I will remember someone fromt he pastwho I haven’t heard from in years, and I’ll stop to pray for them. All the better if it is someone who left behind a history of pain – the prayer for the good welfare of an enemy on earth makes that person a friend in heaven. Your prayer for them will lead to a forgiving heart, and if that person is open to the Holy Spirit, it may lead to reconciliation and forgiveness.
“Pray without ceasing,” wrote the Apostle; make your heart open to a continual attitude of prayer, reaching out to God in all your thoughts and in all you do, and you will hear His voice in that heart.
Nicholas has some mobility problems post-stroke. He has limited vision and frequent vertigo. He is afraid to go out on the street alone. He has a walking stick but because his depth perception difficulties make curbs dangerous, he wants to be accompanied outside. I have looked into training our sheepdog and she is doing well, mostly, except for squirrel distractions. I intend to register her with IAADP and when she has a little more training, put her into a harness and rigid handle.
Does anyone have advice on dealing with a guide dog? I am an experienced dog trainer (more than thirty years and at least a dozen dogs, some cats and a couple of sheep.)
The biggest challenge, really, is getting Nicholas to bond with the dog. He still misses his own little dog, gone to live with his daughter, and he thinks Ash is kind of stupid. (Which she isn’t; she is very bright and learns fast.) She is not an aggressive or alpha dog, is very friendly at home, very quiet – generally, the ideal dog for mobility work. She has learned many guide dog commands and is working well in traffic. She’s beginning to understand crosswalks and signals – which she had never seen until a month ago.
Soon I’ll have to get him out with her. It’s no good training her to be my guide dog! Any ideas on bonding? I tried to get him to feed her, but he has trouble getting her food to the right place by leaning over. Should he be handfeeding her treats? He seems to think she should do tricks like his old dog, but since she was a working dog, I never bothered to teach her cute tricks.
Do you have guide or service dog experience?
I have been wanting a real bonnet for a while, the flattering face framing kind. The traditional Lancaster County bonnet with the scallops is lovely, but too ethnic-specific. And the Wenger style driving bonnet is like one I made myself, which is great in the summer but not snug enough for winter. I made my own winter bonnet, but it is starting to fade.
I don’t know how to get the great even gathers and the stiff back of the traditional bonnet, so I would like to buy one. But the source I was looking at doesn’t carry them anymore. And there is the issue of shipping to Canada. Some vendors just won’t do it.
So does anyone have a source for a more traditional, Quaker or Mennonite bonnet in black?
We have a meeting scheduled with our bishop, in two weeks. I am wary of this meeting; we have not been active in the church in more than four years, and spent some time sojourning elsewhere. I asked to be received back into active ministry after Nicholas’s stroke, with the hope that I would be employed again in the one field where I am trained. I haven’t had a secular job in about thirteen years, and I doubt if I could find a job in this recession economy. I am not too proud to take a labor-intensive job, but there are few of those available! I have been trying to sell my Dodge truck, but no one has cash for such things right now.
I don’t think this is going to be the “welcome back” meeting. There are too many issues still floating around about our departure from parish ministry (after four years). It’s not as if we had wild lives as priests, or since – we have always lived very quietly, discreetly and since our time outside the parish, we have become more traditional and remained among the most conservative. We have not embraced any heresies or heterodox practices. Our sojournings were among the most traditional of the jurisdictions, and we did not officially join any of them. We did street ministry in what I think was a very effective way. Thee knows of the ministry of this blog, as well!
Will this be enough to welcome us back? Or will church politics, a lack of forgiveness among the people of our former parishes and an unwillingness to accept the changes of our lives prevail? I do not think the bishop himself is swayed by public opinion; he is an experienced administrator, but he has to take into consideration how others will perceive us and will react.
Is this at all fair? I doubt that, but the church is just as affected by emotion and reaction as the world.
Please pray for us in this, that we will have willing hearts and good courage to hear what may be difficult, that the bishop (Claude) will hear the Holy Spirit in this, and that we will be directed to the best ministry for us and the people of God.
…which is concerning tag surfing on wordpress! I can, in management mode, check out what other bloggers have posted under the same tags. I consistently look for “anabaptist, mennonite, amish” but I had taken off Quaker a while ago, so I added it back in. Oh, yeah, that’s why I removed it – I get lots of recipes using Quaker Oats!
I took off “anglican” as well because mostly I got a bunch of Sunday sermons and ID pictures of smiling men in chasubles. Note to priests: Don’t post pictures of yourself in a chasuble. It is one of the least flattering of clerical garments, the liturgical fashion equivalent of the late-1960s poncho.
