Why We Do Not Skip Last Looks

Oh mah gah, ugh! Gah!

Woe is moi. I just reviewed some video from Sunday service, where I was the liturgist but not the preacher, so I wore a suit and decided to put a stole over that rather than robe.

SUCH A bad idea!

Video is such a humbler, my friends. It will bring you down, the video footage. And yet the truth will set you free, even at the cost of your self-esteem for a few days. I’ll get better, and I’ll get over it.

Here’s what happened. I was wearing a suit, so I stupidly thought I would be fine rushing to get ready and skipping “last looks.” Last looks is when you STOP DEAD IN YOUR TRACKS before you go out to greet or lead the service, you look in a full length mirror, you make sure your hair is not doing something ridiculous, you clip your mic on and look again to make sure your hair isn’t doing something ridiculous around the mic (I use an earworn unit) or the mic wire. You get the rear view of hair, stole, robe, suit, hems, everything.

You straighten your stole.
You brush the bit of dirt of your shoe or jacket.
You check your teeth.

THEN you go out to be with your people.

I skipped Last Looks this Sunday.

My stole was a big crooked. It was stupidly, ridiculously too long to wear with a skirt suit.
I had a chunk of hair hanging like a rat tail down my back. Yuck. Terrible (the front looked fine. I had LOOKED at the front).
My suit jacket was neatly buttoned but pulled askew (probably from hugging someone).
An askew suit jacket on a chunky lady looks a hot mess, kids. I’m telling you. So what have we learned?
Suits are not guarantee that we will not look sloppy. I HAVE LEARNED THIS THE HARD WAY. LEARN FROM MY MISTAKE.
I should have stood up slowly, and surreptitiously pulled my suit jacket into place before — or even while — approaching the altar.

I was wearing bright teal stockings under a charcoal skirt suit, with knee-high boots. It was perfectly lovely while I was standing up, I assure you, with just a wee inch or so of stocking visible when I walk.
HOWEVER, when I sat to listen to the Time For All Ages, my pencil skirt hiked up a WEE bit, okay, but do you know how bad that WEE BIT looks when that wee bit of visible leg is clad in screaming turquoise?
Oh, mama, it looks real bad.

That is IT, sayanora, adios, fare thee well, for my cute colored stockings worn with anything but ankle or calf-length skirts if I’m not going to don vestments on a Sunday morning. Granted, I was careful to keep my knees together and to sit up straight. Still, being only human, my knees did not stay squished together every single second I was on display in the front row. BRIGHT TURQUOISE!

I hate wearing a stole over street clothes and have spoken against it, and I am going to give myself a V-8 knock in the head and stop ignoring my own rules! In the future I shall wear a lovely scarf in lieu of a stole if I’m presiding in street clothes. If I am not sure that visitors can identify me as the minister of the congregation I can make the radical decision to INTRODUCE MYSELF.

I hereby put myself in the Naughty Corner.
I’ll be here with my beagle, who belongs in the naughty corner tonight for eating his own poop.
The difference between the two of us is that he thinks what he did is totally okay.