In my foray into the great Plain, I have come across two puzzles. Here they are:
1) Why don’t Plain women wear red?
2) Is it just me that finds a happy synthesis with Plain life and the World Wide Web?
The red thing is quick to tackle. I am forming an impression that Plain dressing Christians have a problem with red. I have looked carefully at a lot of photos, and noticed that (apart from black), Plain women wear burgundy, blue (including eye-watering shades of electric blue), violet, green, yellow and pink – but not orange or red.
I am hazarding guesses. I think red is classed as ‘gaudy’; not sober enough, too worldly. I think red has associations with prostitution and adultery in the ever-feverish religious imagination (Rehab’s scarlet cord in Joshua Ch 1-7; Scarlet Women, The Scarlet Letter, etc).
Breaking news, if this is the case. God, who make poppies and robins and sunsets and Scarlet Pimpernels and tomatoes and chilli peppers and rose-hips and holly berries and red roses and rosy apples and rosy cheeks…
…does … not… agree…
I have a red head-covering in my Plain stash. It is for cheerfulness.
On to Puzzle No 2.
I am guessing that the Amish and others who abstain from internet connection do so because they fear it will undermine community and increase worldliness.
I guess it could. Anyone who sits down at a computer has the option to explore pornographic sites and dubious chat rooms, or be so absorbed into virtual unreality as to become disconnected from church and family life. I guess by now all of us know someone who dashed off on an adulterous affair with some wildly unsuitable individual encountered online. Where there is opportunity, danger lurks for the bored, the naïve, the unwary and the discontented.
But there’s another side to the internet. Here in the UK, the Conservative Quakers are so few and so scattered that they are nurtured under the wing of the Ohio Yearly Meeting. Their members are in London, Derbyshire, Cambridge, the West Country and even Finland! They meet on Skype; and without it they would not meet at all.
Just about everything (not quite all) I have found out about Plain life I discovered first online. There is a Bruderhof (Hutterian-Brethren-that-was) community near me, but as I and my husband have both been divorced and our ex-partners are still living, we could not be part of that, though we can still be friends with them. Here, there are no Amish, Conservative Mennonites, Hutterites or Conservative Quakers. There are some Brethren, but they won’t even shake my hand, so holy unto the Lord are they.
I did try a couple of years back to join an online Plain dress group, but they refused me admission.
It would be a lonely old journey without the internet, would it not!
Here I have found understanding, encouragement, good fellowship and fellow-travellers.
The internet allows me to work at home to my own schedule, and so supports my family life. It allows me to source events and products that accord with my ethical value system, and to discover and support projects like this and initiatives like this.
The internet (like cell-phone text messaging) is quiet and non-intrusive, allowing me to send a message that waits courteously for a convenient time, unlike the telephone that jangles imperiously, insisting on an answer now, and giving no space for cautious and considered responses. The internet allows group participation in instant messaging or group email exchanges, which letters do not except in the clunkiest ways.
I believe in family, in community, in solidarity and non-duality: but I am not suspicious or wary of originality and individuality.
While those on one side of the globe cry out for help and the internet lets us hear them, I am satisfied that God has not gone offline; He is here with us on the internet too. While the robin-redbreast still sings in the holly bush, I am satisfied that the good Lord looks on red and calls it good; it can brighten up my wardrobe as well as my garden.
There is space in the life I call Plain and the Quiet Way I am walking for the world wide web and the colour scarlet; and I thank God for them both.