The Plain-ness I have now embraced is not my first go at Plain. Living simply and dressing modestly have been aspirations of my entire adult life. I would never have worn a skirt you could see through or gone out in a sleeveless top, and ‘small, few and shabby’ has been my domestic rule of thumb.
When I was about thirty I had a spell of headcovering – but retired in confusion, being unprepared for the hostility and contempt it provokes and the extent to which it singles you out. I didn’t like being ‘that woman who wears the scarf’. I had another little wave of it just at the turn of the century, but went for sikh-style cloths which I found flappy and impractical to wear.
Then in 2007 I found out about Plain Quakers, and the Amish, and everything fell into place for me. I embraced Plain dress with great joy. It didn’t last, and there were three reasons why.
1) No-one else was dressing or living Plain that I knew (offline). In church gatherings, surrounded by women in tight jeans talking about slimming and planning pamper parties and serving wine at the house group, I felt deeply embarrassed and very out of place. Among them, I looked seriously strange. Frumpy strange. Unsuccessful strange. Uncool strange. And I hated it. Every single Quaker woman I knew dressed in trousers. Wherever I looked, there was no-one like me. I felt like an owl in the wood going ‘Tu-whit! Tu-whit!’ and waiting in vain for the joy of the answering ‘Tu-whoo!’
2) Now this may seem like a small thing I’m about to say next, but it was a small thing at a crucial moment, OK? I applied to join a closed group of Plain-dressing women, for Plain-dressing women, online. They considered my application for a very long time – and then they turned me down. That’s all.
3) I was writing a book at the time called In Celebration of Simplicity, about the call to simplicity that has drawn me all my life. It had a section in it about dress. That section had to be radically re-written. At the time I was dressing Plain, and I wrote about all the things we know about Plain – how it protects people of non-standard appearance from discrimination and disadvantage, how it’s modest and humble and not a slave to fashion, how it’s a witness and a badge of fellowship and all the rest of it. In that section I wrote about a Plain community that has a branch of itself very near where I live. I really love them. They are beautiful people; candid and forthright, warmhearted and principled, people of passion and soul who love the Lord and do His work wholeheartedly in every day of their lives. We don’t agree on everything, but that doesn’t matter; I just love them. At one time, when my children were small, our family almost joined them, we started seeking membership. As we began the process in earnest, some things became apparent that revealed our understanding of life and faith to be not quite close enough for us to be members of their group. One of the things was that the wife of their leader had a quiet chat with me explaining that, once we were in, we would be sent off to America so our relatives here couldn’t trouble us any more. I was alarmed by that. I loved this group, but hadn’t meant I didn’t love my family – I loved them too and had no wish to sever relationship with them. There were also issues about the charismata of the Holy Spirit. Speaking in tongues in particular was disapproved in this community at that time (I don’t know about now); and my reading of the Bible says that quenching the Holy Spirit is a sin – I would not dare to forbid the use of His gifts. So we didn’t become brothers and sisters with that family, but I think we are kind of cousins (spiritually I mean). At that time, visiting often with the community, I saw things that moved and spoke to my soul, and I wrote about them in my simplicity book. What I saw showed me the value of Plain dress, and the difference it makes to allowing people to be included, and giving people dignity. I also included a photo, which is in many places on the internet, of an old lady who had been in their community. During the period we were visiting often with the community, I had prayed, asking God to show me a woman He thought was really beautiful. And He showed me that photograph, of this lady in her nineties, with her cheerful eager face full of brightness and joy. She died long ago, but the photograph lives on. Anyway, for the normal courtesy of book-writing, I sent the section I had written off to the community, asking their permission to include it (as it mentioned them) with the photograph. They wrote back and said ‘No’. No to the photo, no to the stories, no to any mention of them whatsoever. The letter explained why; it was part of their philosophy of life not to draw attention to themselves in any way. I had to completely re-write that section of the book. But it wasn’t just the book that changed. It changed me too. It seemed there was no point in trying to be part of the whole Plain world, because they didn’t want me. Their story was not my story, their groups had no room for me. In groups that did include and welcome me, Plain equaled weird; and at that time, in the midst of much personal turmoil and living far from home, I wanted someone who would welcome me and somewhere to belong. So I changed what I said in the simplicity book. I spoke about simple dress, and said that I had tried Plain but dressed now in comfy jackets and trousers.
I gave my Plain dresses away. I didn’t want to draw attention to myself either. I wanted to fit in too. And to fit in, you have to have a group to stand with. The Plain world, it seemed, was a closed world. Either you severed all connection with people who loved and trusted you to join their closed ranks, or you stayed outside. The Amish practice of shunning does not sit easy with me either; nor does excommunication, for that table is not the church’s but the Lord’s.
Looking back now, those seem such tiny reasons to give up trying to be Plain. I guess I was working through a lot of other stuff at the time and was a bit hair-trigger in sensitivity. It took me a long time to go back to the Plain community near my home again; but I did go back. The friendship has outlasted the sense of hurt.
Anyway, the call came back, even more insistent. I tried every way I knew of dressing Plain without actually dressing Plain if you see what I mean – and it wasn’t enough. So I came back to it. But this time, I am more at peace because my expectations have altered. This time, I expect it to be a waste of time to ask Plain groups to make me welcome or affirm my witness. I expect people to look at me oddly in the street and be rude or simply nonplussed about my appearance. I expect that in normal churches I will look strange, and the way I live my life and my leisure activities won’t fit in. So this time, there has been no disappointment, and no sense of hurt. And this time I am more determined. If Christ has called me to this Plain way, then that’s how I’m going to walk – in company or alone, it doesn’t matter; I’m going to do it anyway. And if the fact that I’ve been divorced and married a divorced man makes me non-kosher in Plain society, I’m still going to do it anyway. I can’t in all honesty say I don’t care because I care very much – but I can go it alone, alone is OK. There is One who I’m following whose company is all I really need.
Plain means this to me:
Dressing modest and simple, with my head covered, in full-skirted dresses that cover rather than emphasise my bodyThese are the things – some of them – that I am learning on this way. And even without the fellowship I long for, it is a happy way, and free, full of contentment. And I am learning to take others as I find them, without expecting more than they feel they can give.
Living quietly and simply and humbly and cheerfully, with few possessions
Sharing life with others and serving them where and when I can
Stewarding my resources of energy, time, possessions, ability and money, to fulfil what I was sent into this world to do
Doing my best to make the Lord Jesus known and loved everywhere
Supporting and nurturing, in other’s lives and my own, what is handmade and handgrown; de-emphasising the impersonal, the mass-produced and the highly commercial; looking for the organic, the local, the small, the fairly traded and the second-hand
Preferring sewing and singing together and gardening and making things over watching television or going shopping or having beauty treatments
Making home, with its homecooked food and homegrown entertainment the first choice of venue for chillout space – not the pub or the club or the mall
Giving no place in my life to alcohol
Giving the whole of my life to help build the Peaceable Kingdom, so that the reign of Christ’s compassion and reconciling love may heal humanity and restore wholeness to the web of creation and this beautiful, beautiful Earth
Limiting the resources I use so that God’s creatures may live in freedom and God’s children may be fed
Speaking truth candidly and openly, but in kindness and generosity
Treading lightly, leaving no tracks, being content with invisibility, learning to be of no account
But what Plain does not mean to me is any kind of exclusivity. Like the Brethren preacher in the street everyone was crossing the way to avoid. I stopped to tell him I loved the Lord Jesus too, and asked to shake his hand. He refused on the grounds that I was not in fellowship with him at the Lord’s table so, no, he would not take my hand. Or the Brethren family whose little girl went to school with my youngest daughter. We invited her to tea and got a letter back saying they were holy unto the Lord and set apart for Him; so, no, they could not consort with the people like us who were not washed in the blood of the Lamb (actually I thought I was, but hey), and no, little Emily would not be coming to tea.
So my kind of Plain is not religious speak for ‘push off’. It looks odd, but if you can get over that, well I guess I can get over your weirdnesses too. The Plain I am trying for is holy, I hope; but though it sometimes hits that and sometimes misses it, it is certainly always human, with all the mistakes and the inadequacy that goes along with that. And I prefer it that way.