Beauty Tips for Ministers

Shoe-Sharing As a Prelude To World Peace

A very fun thing that can happen when you write a blog is that you can make a new friend through your blog and you can turn out to magically have the same size shoe and when your new friend comes over to go to the beach and realizes that she forgot to bring the right shoes for her date dress, you can loan her yours!
And they can look absolutely perfect!

Yay!

Calling Music Minister Mary!!

Dear Mary R.,
I hope you get two e-mails from me regarding your July 12th note about your impending interview. I gave you my phone number. Please call.

I feel terrible that your e-mail was in my spam folder. xoxo PB

Serious Hair Paste

Dear wild-haired friends,

Do you have a hair style that could benefit from a supernaturally strong styling aid? One that adds body and volume and that can keep even the most spiky, stickin’-up styles way up in the air? If so, please check out Sebastians Xtah Crude Clay, formerly known as Cream Clay Modeler. PeaceBang has been using it for years.

Some fun facts:

1. It does tend to dry the hair, so use extremely sparingly.

2. It only looks expensive. One tub can easily last for two years.

3. Apply to dry hair by putting a small blob on hands and rubbing it in well (to avoid paste globs on your haid), then applying to roots. I either work it into my fingertips for more specific spot application or into my palms for all-over help. Use a gingerly, fast touch when applying. Concentrate on the roots, then pull through to the ends. Your hair will be extremely big when you finish, but it will calm down almost immediately. For sweaty-head preachers, top with a hairspray that gives some shine (Aveda makes a nice one — but DON’T use just a shine-spray, as that isn’t meant to hold style but merely to add shine, and can make hair very greasy).

4. My hair is thick, wavy and fine. My scalps sweats easily and I have found that no other paste product works as well as this one for that reason.

5. Let me know how it works for you!

Kiss of peace! PB

She Needs Stole Help

Honeybees,

Mary Ann wants more help on red stoles. She writes,

Could you help me more with stoles? My lascivious desire to buy South American folklorico stoles at Third World craft sales at seminary turned out to be The Thrifty Pastor’s Choice, but I’m still low a red stole.

MaryAnn, my dove, we don’t do liturgical seasons so much in the Unitarian Universalist tradition but I do own a gorgeous red stole with embroidered peace doves all over it. I can’t recall where I got it, but it’s either Latin American or Eastern European. Maybe it was a gift? Anyhoo,
since my church interior is a kind of Federal mauve shade and I preach in front of a mauve-pink brocade curtain, I can’t really wear this stole as much as I’d like. It just plain clashes, in color and even a bit in style. My church is a beautiful, classic New England meetinghouse. Overtly ethnic stoles just don’t seem authentic in that setting, and if they’re being worn by me, they’re definitely not authentic. I have never preached in a foreign land or done ministry in a multi-cultural setting. For those reasons, I tend not to wear the Guatemalan stole I purchased this past January. I’m glad I bought it when I was there — just to support the local economy if nothing else, but I have to say that it looks more appropriate gracing my office than gracing me.

We do have a partner church in Transylvania with which we have a long and intimate relationship and I would be happy to wear one of the customary red and white stoles from that region. But African stoles, Latin American stoles, etc… I don’t think they’re appropriate for white pastors who don’t do mission and ministry with those communities to wear just for diversity’s sake. It’s a very personal decision and one with which many of my colleagues are likely to disagree.

I dream of being completely bi-lingual in English and Spanish and doing a ministry in a multi-cultural urban setting. Until then, I’ll be very judicious in my donning of vestments that communicate an intimacy with cultures I have very little acquaintance with (and admiration from afar, sending money, preaching about on occasion and/or reading about doesn’t count).

Sorry to be of so little help to you, MaryAnn! My stoles have almost all come to me as gifts, or as purchases at our General Assembly.

Perfume Fun

SisterBang and I are totally fascinating on this gothy on-line parfumerie, Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab. You might just find a Christmas present for that Marilyn Manson-lovin’ teen in your household. If all else fails, you can stock up on the Seven Deadly Sins fragrances yourself. There’s even one named for me (no, not The Witch Queen).

And this blog, Now Smell This, is lots of fun if you want to read some unbiased fragrance reviews before you go out shopping for one.

By the way, my favorite fragrance right now is a heavenly bright happy scent by Parfums 06130 called Yuzu Rouge. Yummmmm. It’s light enough to use as an all-over body mister and will perk you right up on those soggy days.

Victorious Robes

Thanks for writing in with all these great links for vestments and robes that I’ve never seen before!

Someone just directed us to the Victorious Robes catalog, which promises “Qwick-Ship” and whose prices aren’t as bad as many others’.

I think their pulpit robes are fine, and their vestments seem fine, too.

I’m fascinated by the “Church Attire” catagory but I’m not really sure what that’s supposed to mean.
I’m kind of speechless over the men’s vests. If my pastor or ushers ever wore one of those vests I’d think they had forgotten to change from their moonlighting job as a blackjack dealer at the local casino.

And the women’s suits are very Mother of the Bride. We’ve got to do something about the Brocade Abuse going on in these catalogs. We’re not supposed to try to compete with the paraments.