Of all the expressions of faith community I have seen, the one that calls to me most has to be the plain-dressing Conservative Quakers.
I attended the Quaker meeting in Aylesbury sometimes, and have been once to the Hastings one.
I loved everything about Quaker meeting, the silence, the people, the simplicity, the seriousness, the social and environmental awareness, the candour; everything except one thing – the approach to the Bible.
I have a high view of scripture, and I try to live my life in the light of the biblical witness. I like to hear it read and expounded, and where that is absent from worship I miss it sorely. My problem with the Quaker meetings I went to was not that the Bible was absent but that it was mis-represented. On several occasions when Friends offered ministry they began by saying ‘Jesus said…’ or ‘The Bible says somewhere…’ then went on to offer a serious misquotation of what is actually written.
When I mentioned this to a Friend who had become a friend, she counselled me to greater humility, commenting that maybe the Friend offering ministry in the meeting had been using a different translation, or perhaps my interpretation was not the only one possible. I admired her humility, but she was actually wrong. The type of error was not the sort produced by differing translation or interpretation; it was plain inaccurate.
I felt I could not keep company with a form of public worship where the ministry claiming to represent the Bible did not do so, where the Bible was little read if ever, referred to with inaccuracy, never expounded, and almost forgotten.
Everything else about the Quakers I completely loved.
Online I met some Conservative Friends based in Ohio. I think if I had lived in Ohio and could have travelled in fellowship with them we should have got along fine: but something happens to folks’ sense of boundaries and estimation of courtesy and respect in online interactions. My Conservative Friends, with some gentle and peaceable exceptions, were so robust in their interactions I felt we had strayed into hurtful and aggressive territory; I signed out and left them to it. I go back though, and look wistfully at Quaker Jane’s website and Facebook page, and Kevin Roberts' wonderful, thoughtful blog – and I think, I wish I lived near you; you feed my soul.
We do have Conservative Quakers in England, but they are beyond my travelling radius.
One of the things that draws me to Conservative Friends is Plain Dress. Now, I don’t understand this. We are born naked and in nakedness I see no shame. It troubles me not at all if ladies wish to wear dresses with short skirts and spaghetti straps and men wander the streets wearing a pair of shorts, a pair of sandals and nothing else. But for myself, I do still like to dress modest.
I often haunt websites that show Plain Dress or describe the life and times of Hutterites, Mennonites, Amish and Plain Quakers (like this), and browse longingly through The Kings Daughters and other modest dressing websites, and I put them away from me with a sigh.
Plain Dress, headcovering et al, for me spells peace.
A few years ago I’d spent some time gradually converting my wardrobe to plain dress. I just got to the place where my whole wardrobe was plain, when I realized it didn’t work.
Almost nobody dresses plain in the UK. In America, it is a kind of language, and people understand what they are seeing. In England, it looks like ‘fancy dress’ (ie a re-enactor’s costume); it doesn’t say anything except ‘weird’; the witness is lost in transmission, because it doesn’t transmit. It’s like going everywhere dressed as a milkmaid.
Now, if I lived alone, that wouldn’t especially bother me. I have enough trouble fitting in with human society that a little matter like the way I dress could hardly make much difference. But my husband finds plain dress ugly, and that's important to me (and I think it should be). On the rare occasions when we go anywhere together as a couple, it is (I think) important that his wife looks like something that those we meet can relate to on some level. If what they see looks to them only like a refugee from The Sound Of Music, the wrong buttons have been pressed. My mother and daughters (and my husband) were kind as always, refraining from any comment whatsoever except in one or two instances saying that I must wear whatever made me happy, and leaving ‘even if you look like a total freak’ unsaid.
So I parted company with my plain dress wardrobe, and I did so with real heartache. I loved those clothes best of all.
I’m not sure why clothes matter, but to me they certainly do. In the words of Elizabeth Fry:
"I used to think and do now how little dress matters. But I find it almost impossible to keep to the principles of Friends without altering my dress and speech. . . . They appear to me a sort of protector to the principles of Christianity in the present state of the world."
I agree with her. When I dress plain, I pass through the world clothed in a protecting bubble of quietness. It makes a tremendous difference to me.
So I have developed my own take on ‘plain’. It’s not the same as dressing according to the Quaker Plain idiom that is a tacit alliance to a faith community; but it is at any rate modest and serious.
Most of my clothes are of sober hue and in solid colour – dark blue, grey, black, dark green, burgundy, purple or brown. But I have one or two fun garments that are flowery or tie-dyed in bright colours, just for the cheerfulness; I think cheerfulness is a good witness.
What I wear is as follows.
Underneath everything else I wear (ladies only please – gentlemen I assure you they will not interest you!) these; and a standard top half foundation garment of a modest and practical construct.
I have bad varicose veins, the appearance of my legs blesses nobody, I like to go barefoot as long as weather permits, and I only sit up straight on a chair if I have to; my strange circulatory system makes it very uncomfortable, so I sit on the floor or curled in an armchair or the corner of a sofa (these come in handy away from home). So long skirts that reveal my frightsome shins and ankles – not to mention flying up when you least expect it on a windy day, and revealing more than intended when sitting on the floor or playing with a child – don’t work so well for me; trousers are better. However, standard trousers don’t meet my modesty criteria.
So I wear these. All the time. In different colours, mostly black, dark green, grey or brown. They are the most modest garment I have ever come across, they look reasonably normal (intelligible at least) out and about in English streets, they say ‘modest’ to Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims as well as Christians; and plus I think they are funky as well. Scratch my surface and you find a hippy. A plain-dressing hippy. These trousers do well. And however hard the wind blows, however much I frolic on the floor with my grandson, however I sit on the sofa – they stay modest. They are also very modestly priced, and that’s important; Plain should not be inordinately expensive, in my view.
On my feet I wear Birkenstock sandals (or go barefoot) in all but winter wet. Trainers, sturdy boots, or plain soft full-sole jazz shoes are my alternative footwear when the occasion demands.
On the top half, I have a variety of things – I’d go for one type, same as the trousers are one type, except I’ve never found something I like enough to always wear it. So these are what I have: polo-neck big floppy tee-shirt tunics in green, grey, brown or black, adding a similarly big floppy waistcoat/vest over the top if extra warmth or modesty are needed (depends on weight of tunic); lagenlook tunic dresses in grey or black. I can't link you to any of these, because I buy (mostly 2nd-hand)one-offs from eBay. In hot weather I wear a light vest top in a solid colour, with either a very lightweight white long overblouse or a loose drapey rayon abaya/jilbab/djellabah-type dress (trousers under as well of course). I wear that kind of dress when I take funerals too.
On cold days I wear a top layer over my tunic tops, for warmth, of a simple, solid-colour fleece or a knitted sweater. These are mostly adequate as coats as well. When the weather gets colder I just add under and outer layers – leggings under my trousers, more vests or a warmer waistcoat under the fleece, etc.
And on my head?
The whole thing of headcovering is a vexed issue for me, and I have not found anything that I can say with confidence works well. Also I find the scriptural references ambiguous. This scripture seems to say that the woman’s long hair acts as her head-covering. Besides which, I suspect that getting into scrupulosity of scriptural interpretation in such detail can lead to the territory of literalism and fundamentalism, which though it appeals to my temperament I believe offers a relatively sterile harvest. I hear the quiet voice that calls to women to cover their heads, but I believe that in the final analysis it is the attitude of a person that counts, not her hat. If I did it, I think I’d go for a scarf worn as a turban. Again, in the UK, the message headcovering sends out is not ‘Faithful’, but ‘Poor Thing – Chemotherapy’ or ‘Oh, She Must Be On Duty At A Mediaeval Pageant’.
My other rule of thumb is that all my clothes must fit into the medium-sized chest of drawers that sits alongside my bed (apart from my 4 abayas which hang in Fi’s wardrobe so they are not too crumply when I want to wear them).