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Christian Century Clergy Attire Blog Post: PeaceBang Review

Oh, Christ. I mean Jesus Christ. As in, the actual Jesus Christ.
Jesus, could you please join me on stage here for a moment while we talk about the problem with this “I’m discovering my clergy identity and am so happy I can wear cool sweaters and not suits” article at The Christian Century?

It’s here.

Jesus and I are going to stand up here and just look at at our audience of ministers for awhile. Jesus is looking at his watch, because he has way more important things to do than to hang around a conversation about clergy image but I asked him to be here for moral support.

Jesus, I am really, really tired of people invoking You when they talk about how they make their decisions about how to dress themselves OVER TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER you walked among us in bodily form. Could you please hold my hand? You don’t have to say anything.

Jesus, you’re wearing a tunic and beat up sandals. You have never taken a shower in your life. You have never owned deodorant or had a professional haircut. You do not shave. You have never owned a tissue. Can you please explain to your people that they should STOP looking to you for guidance on attire? Like, can you PLEASE tell them that all your spiritual teachings are SPIRITUAL and that they should stop pretending we live in anything even remotely resembling the world you lived in?

You’re not going to say anything? You’re just going to stand there patiently in your tunic and let me say it?

Fine, then, I will. Yes, go get some coffee. It’s over there against the wall. No, I don’t want any, thank you. Don’t trip on the mic wires.

Katherine Willis Pershey starts her essay by describing her first years in ministry, when she wore an ugly, unflattering black suit and frumpy clothing that didn’t feel like her.
Yes, many of us can relate.
I can certainly relate!
It takes time to grow into our clergy identities and to develop a look that works for the multi-faceted work that we do.

However, my frustration with this article — and the many almost exactly like it — is that it stops at “Wow, I’m not someone who looks good in traditional suits” and concludes with what is actually a lazy analysis of how we should dress : namely, to express ourselves.
Jesus, can you please hit that buzzer? WRONG!
Dressing professionally for clergy isn’t merely a matter of individual comfort and preference and what makes us “feel like a million bucks.” Our responsibility as those who represent the Church and the ministry is dual: to our work first and to ourselves a very close second.

This means that we have to try harder and go deeper. First, where are we spending our time on any given day, and what do we need to communicate non-verbally while we’re there?
“I feel great” is not enough. “I am creative and interesting and fun” is fine to communicate if FIRST you have met your obligation to represent the church and the ministry appropriately.

Priorities, people. We have a fascist on the verge of becoming president of the United States. We have a man in the running for the highest office in the land who brags about committing sexual assault and getting away with it because of his celebrity. We have a potential Groper In Chief ascending to power — even if he is not elected, this cat is out of the bag — who is a proudly white supremacist, xenophobic aspirational dictator. He calls women pigs and commits wage theft against workers and brags about evading taxes and is generally contemptible, and PEOPLE LOVE HIM.

Some of them are in your congregations.

So seriously, you’re going to get dressed in the morning with no higher goal than to look like a cool, creative person?

No. Not acceptable. Find a suit that suits you. How dare any of us put our comfort before the necessity of looking like people whose perspective and moral authority matter in this nation?

Oh, and by the way? The guy who owns Anthropologie is a fundamentalist Christian who gives lots of money to causes that restrict our freedoms as women. Yea, their clothes are really cool, but he’s using our desire to look like a beautiful Bohemian soul to fund rightwing initiatives and policies that hurt people. You could say that most companies exploit humans in some way, but Anthropologie is so heavily marketed to liberal chicks, I like to inform them where their hard-earned money is going when they purchase those gorgeous peasant blouses and tough-sexy cowgirl prairie skirts.

Not owning a suit is nothing to brag about. What is says is that one willfully rejects the idea that she will be called upon to make a serious statement in the halls of power or anywhere where important people gather and do their business. It is irresponsible and self-marginalizing.

And we wonder why people smile indulgently at members of the clergy, shake our hands, use our titles with more respect for our former, rather than current, status in society, and promptly ignore our recommendations or admonitions.

Jesus, I’ve changed my mind. I’d like a cup of coffee after all. But could you turn it into wine?
Actually, could you turn it into bourbon?

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Ministerial Formation In The Rocky Horror Picture Show: Internship Politics

Please reinforce your spirits with prayer before reading this Dark Night of The Seminarian Soul that came to PeaceBang some months ago:

SAVE ME! YOGA PANTS! IN CHURCH! ON THE CHANCEL!

On a lay religious professional, in a worship leadership role. I am hyperventilating here.

Sorry, do not have pictures. I was also on the chancel. In a dress. An appropriate dress.

Here’s the thorny part, though. I’m the brand new intern. Our mutual colleague who supervises this person (and me!) apparently doesn’t care what anybody wears. We’ve talked about the subject from time to time and this minister has other priorities. I think she’s wrong, but this is not a hill I’m willing to die on.

Political savvy, I do not have it yet. Is it obnoxious of me to keep wearing professional dress when the people I’m working with might as well be in their pajamas? Do I need to dress down? Or can I try to subtly nudge standards by dressing intentionally?

Sign me,
I put on hose for this? Yes I did.

Yes, you did, intern pigeon. And you will continue to dress appropriately even if others feel it is appropriate to insult the sanctity of the occasion by wearing yoga pants for any aspect of leading worship. Just because a religious professional is not ordained does not give them a “I’m messing around on the floor with the kids later so I can wear yoga pants now” pass.

PASS DENIED.

So what’s an intern to do? One way to broach a conversation with your supervising minister is to play dumb. “Is there any kind of dress code or expectation for Sunday morning worship attire? I was wondering.” Do NOT say, “I noticed that Sloppy Sally was presiding in gym wear, is that okay with you?” or refer to anyone else at all. You are in ministerial formation, so ask for yourself only. The supervising minister may have an interesting and thoughtful response or she may laugh at you for asking the question. The supervisor may not have thought about it, at which point you can say, “Well, I’ve been reading this blog called Beauty Tips For Ministers for awhile and the author has really persuaded me that we live in a visual, media saturated culture and that clergy need to be intentional about our public image if we are going to have the kind of impact we hope to have in the world.”

Conversation launched!

If your supervisor says, “Thank you for asking, I notice that you have tended to dress more formally and I appreciate having an opportunity to explain to you why I dress extremely casually,” you’re lucky, even if you yourself choose to dress more formally. The two of you can discuss your own strategies openly and you may decide to start skipping the pantyhose or sports jacket in deference to the particular ministry context.
If your supervisor says, “Oh my God, who cares?” then you should quietly file that away under “mentoring deficiencies.” Find someone else who does care with whom you can discuss and discern your developing leadership image.

All supervisors have strengths and weaknesses. While under a particular mentor’s tutelage, it behooves interns to play Follow The Leader to a certain extent, unless to do so violates their integrity. If you are dressing more formally than your internship supervisor, that isn’t necessarily a bad or inappropriate choice. You are modeling respect and professionalism, and the wider community may appreciatively note your self-differentiation and polish. Don’t be surprised if they come to you to complain about their pastor’s disappointing garb, as happened to someone I know very well. If that should happen, never triangulate with your supervisor! Tell the parishioner that it would be best to address their pastor directly about their concerns and get out of the conversation as quickly as you can. Never, ever under any circumstances be caught making critical remarks about your supervisor with parishioners or staff. That’s what your friends are for, or in the case of egregious ethical or professional violations, your seminary or denominational support systems are there for. Never, ever be tempted by the fawning admiration of a parched, frustrated or neglected congregation into taking testimonials about how crappy their minister is. Always remember that a congregation is a bizarre, “Rocky Horror Picture Show” carnival of God’s weirdos. You are Brad and Janet at the door in your pristine outfit and part of the initiation process is for you to get crawled all over by — wait, am I really using this metaphor?

Anyway, just stay in your lane and respect professional boundaries, dammit (Janet). You’ll be the one in the lab coat soon enough.

If members of your internship committee or parishioners comment on your attire beyond general feedback (and “We’d like to help you pay for a suit” is not an uncommon way for lay people to supportively steer seminarians toward a more professional look and hey, free suit!), alert your supervisor. It is fair game for lay people to comment on your grooming, attire, social affect and voice, as all of those aspects of your exterior presentation are important factors in your effectiveness. However, that does not mean that you have no right to set boundaries about how much, and when and where, you are willing to hear this feedback. Make sure that it is never in a free-for-all manner, and make sure that you are never subject to anonymous comments. Again, if you feel your internship committee members are commenting too freely and too frequently on your appearance, call in your supervisor.

“The sunlight creates a glare on your glasses in the pulpit, and this makes it impossible to see your eyes,” is helpful feedback. “It’s a shame you have such bad acne, would you like the name of a good dermatologist?” is not. Unfortunately, as I have written before, the minister’s body is in many ways a public body and you will eventually learn to stop being shocked by people’s insensitivity and sense of entitlement to insult you or violate your privacy.

For what it’s worth, I do think that “It’s a shame you have such bad social skills, would you like the name of a good therapist?” is a perfectly appropriate riposte to an invasive and cruel remark. Part of the changing clergy archetype in our time, in PeaceBang’s not-at-all-humble opinion, is reacting honestly to things that hurt. If we respond to obnoxious remarks with saintly patience, that only reinforces the stereotype of clergy as characters who are miraculously spared ordinary human emotions.

Show up for yourself and stand up for yourself, in non-defensive and non-anxious ways. Your clarity about how you want to be seen, how you want to communicate respect for the office of minister and the institution of the church (or wherever you are doing the work of ministry) may rattle clergy supervisors who have not deeply considered the question. You be you and let them work out their own stuff. If they get snippy or petty with you (“I don’t know how you can afford such nice clothes, it must take a lot of time to iron your shirts and do your hair so carefully”), keep cool. “I find a lot of great stuff at the Savers, actually” goes great with a smile. “Yes, I wake up 15 minutes earlier on Sundays so I can spend time on the details of getting ready; I find it really helps me center myself before worship” should shut that insecure senior colleague right up.

If respectful and appropriate attire is not a priority for your ministerial supervisor, that does not mean that you shouldn’t maintain it as your own priority. This time of formation and training is exactly the right time for you to be figuring out how to dress and groom and outfit yourself on your budget and within your time and energy constraints. You do not want to just start thinking about how to dress and comport yourself like a minister later down the road when your responsibilities have increased exponentially.

Good luck, darlings. We have all been there.

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Istanbul: On Preachers And Terrorism

This comment made me think a lot:

I think my best comment it that there will always be enough bad news to fill the newspaper. I am a big fan of reading newspapers but I have to remember that those things are far from my real life. My real life is lived in my town with my friends and acquaintances. The things that are arms length from me should matter more to me than what is going on in another state or country.

I get what you’re saying, Donna. We must be grounded in our time and place in our ministries.

But my own tradition emphasizes interdependence and interconnectedness, and I struggle with having a local focus that also acknowledges our place in the world. Unitarian Universalism is an eccentric religion that does not have a set liturgy and therefore no weekly Prayers For The World such as you would find in many church’s worship services. We write ours fresh every Sunday, and that means that we constantly have to make decisions about what to include, what to lift up, for our congregations. If we don’t do it ritually, someone will stand up during our infamous “Joys and Sorrows” segment (or sort of democratic take on the Prayes of the People) and give an off-the-cuff homily on the latest terrorist attack.

(Joys and Sorrows has been a practice among many of us for lots of decades now, and most ministers hate it. Many of us like it because we get a lot of pastoral information in that moment, and we frequently remind the congregation of the three cardinal rules of J’s and S’s: 1. Speak into the mic so everyone can hear you, even if you think you talk loudly enough without the mic. 2. Keep your sharing brief. 3. Keep your sharing personal — ie, this is not the time for anyone to hold forth on social issues.)

I never want my preaching to become a predictable “Rev. Vicki’s Response To The Latest Violence In The World,” but the fact is that terrorist attacks are part of our new shared global reality, experiences domestic violence attorney in Long Island and I feel that pastors must help our people build more spiritual muscle to confront that fact. If the church does not teach how faithful people respond to this reality, false prophets like Donald Trump will teach them how. This is not a time to let the same, comfortable litanies and Scripture passages waft over the ears and assume that those in the pews will know how to translate those passages to their own lives and the new frequency of mass shootings (domestic terrorism) and terrorist violence abroad. Clergy must actively translate, interpret our faith anew to people who are being passionately inveighed outside of the church walls to let fear and paranoia inform our choices as Americans. They are being taught elsewhere that Wisdom is the offspring of suspicion, not love. They are walking out of our doors and heading immediately to their couches and chairs and nodding their heads in agreement over ideas of walls and closed borders and profiling. If that’s not okay with their ministers, then we must address “the news” and not just our local relationships. You can read at their blog for more about domestic violence. Get in touch with Daniel M. Murphy who is the best criminal lawyer like The Hogle Law Firm: criminal defense firm in Mesa. You can get in touch with other criminal lawyers like NJ based criminal justice lawyers

The new global reality means that what is happening in another state or another country is, in fact, happening to all of us. How we build wisdom to speak to it and capacity to absorb and integrate it as clergy is a real challenge of our times.

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Send Your Spirit Out Over Your Community: Practice Of Ministry

You know that post-Sunday tiredness, don’t you, dears?

I spent Friday evening and Saturday morning ’til noon in Maine at our church retreat, so I’m a little extra tired today.

Thinking about ministry, though, as usual. As always. On Friday night, as I was standing in the hallway of our dorm trying to walk as quietly as possible to the bathroom to brush my teeth, it hit me how much like home it seemed to be. The same emotional vibe, I mean.

I thought to myself, “Well, Self, this is interesting. How did that happen? Wasn’t it just eighteen years or so ago that you felt quite awkward at church retreats and rather dreaded them for their requirement that you act both entirely relaxed and yet maintain appropriate ministerial decorum? And you felt like you were performing social bonhomie while feeling weird and insecure and ‘other?'”

I stood in the hallway holding that thought and savoring the silence and the knowledge that behind the closed doors on the corridor, my peeps were asleep, or close to it, and I felt them breathing and I smiled at the parents’ gratitude that our hyper-excited munchkins had calmed down enough about BUNK BEDS to slumber at last.

What has changed?
Faithfulness and the daily practice of ministry has changed me, that’s what.

It all began in intense desire, hopefulness, need and insecurity. VOCATION. ORDINATION. REV’ING. I learned the strange world of ministry day by day, year by year, bizarre crisis by bizarre crisis, death by birth by death, resurrection by resurrection. From the very beginning, I believed that in order to do the work at all well, I needed to send my spirit out over the congregation every day, and for a very long time I had no idea what that meant or what I was doing — I just knew I needed to do it in order to be a half-way decent preacher and pastor.

I still can’t tell you exactly what it means to send my spirit out over the congregation and I still do it all the time. It’s a witchy thing, a prayer thing, a Holy Spirit thing. I irrationally believe that sitting in silence with my ear cocked for a message like a dog listening at the door for her master will provide me with an instinct, intuition or inclination that I need at that moment.

Would we call this listening for Wisdom? Discernment?

I call it desperation. I can’t call or e-mail or visit every single person every day — and I have learned to accept that there is a certain portion of every congregation whom I will never know and who does not wish to be in the psychic air space that we call the covenanted community. I am going to miss a ton of information every day, fail every day to reach out to someone who wishes I would read their mind better and be there for then, and cluelessly and very unintentionally walk right past glaring errors I’ve made. There but for the grace of God, no one has made it their personal job to inform me of those errors and omissions. I know that many of you are not that fortunate, and I am deeply sorry for that because when someone makes it their work to place before the minister all her failings, it blocks the spirit. All that information, when it comes steadily and accurately, forces the heart into hiding.

But I have not had steady critical unkindness leveled at me for many years, and I have not had the tom-tom beat of financial fear and resentment about high expectations matched with low compensation stealing my energy for a very long time. Because of this, I have had the freedom, space, and congregational support to be a minister, a professional soul worker, and when I send my spirit out over the community like a homing pigeon, it comes back to me with information in its beak.

How many times do you sit with fingers on the keyboard, composing a sermon, and stop, feeling with an invisible part of yourself for the contours of what you must say next? You tilt your head to the right or to the left and stare out the window and listen, knowing only that your own take on the gospel message is too little, too limited, there is someone you are forgetting, someone’s life and reality and truth that is not being included and you need help remembering whose it is and what it is.

You are sending your spirit out over your congregation.

Or you are doing dishes, or folding laundry or driving somewhere after having dropped off the kids, and you are reviewing the list of things to be done at church or in your ministry setting. There is this, there is that, there are eight urgent things and thirteen things that you want to organize before the month is out. Then your mind goes blank like a movie screen before the feature begins and you tilt your chin upwards a bit and strain to hear the something beneath the list of tasks you just mentally outlined. If the blank screen had one subtitle projected onto it, it would say something like, “How are they doing?” Or maybe, “Come to me.” You are both the crystal ball and the gazer at it. The ball is suspended in God’s creation, and you know the vision you receive is real. You haven’t even consciously invoked it, so you haven’t engaged your critical intellectual faculty enough to interfere with what you are receiving.

You are sending your spirit out over your community.

On Friday night, toothbrush in hand standing on the third floor of a retreat center dormitory, I sent my spirit out over my community while being physically in the same building with many of them. The homing pigeon came back so fast it knocked me in the heart and solar plexus and it carried this message in its beak:

“SURPRISE, FAITHFUL ONE.”

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PICO Weeklong Power Building Conference

A more serious post, kids! Pull up your standing desks and bouncy balls and settle in.

I attended a training last week for PICO, a faith-based, national network of organizations that work toward social change. It was intense and exhausting. We took in a lot of devastating information. For me, nothing new, but having it all laid out so clearly was upsetting. However, it helped my spirit immensely to have laid out some of the actual steps local teams and coalitions (many of congregations) are making to challenge empire and bring about justice.

I heard a lot of good stories about Davids bringing down Goliaths.

We talked about organizing voting power, immigration reform, identifying what power sources are in bed with what corporate powers in our local settings, and all within the context of the theology of resistance.

The content of the trainings were strong, focused, well-organized and direct. I left the conference with several meetings scheduled with my local chapter of our state-wide network in Massachusetts.

But here I want to show you some of the images of the people who attended. I regret that I do not have their names in most cases. I do know they are all connected with various faith communities. Many are clergy. Please click on the images to see them in a larger format:

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Miss Gloria Cooper, doing amazing organizing work in California. ALWAYS wears a hat.
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Pastor Tawana Davis of Colorado, working to remove the slavery clause from the 13th constitutional amendment. Powerful work and witness, and naming herself PASTOR right on her shirt.
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Andrea Marta, lead organizer for the LIVE FREE campaign.
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A few observations from this conference:
Men and women seemed to me to be leading equally.
White people were not centered. People of color were centered.
It was entirely bi-lingual.
No one tone-policed or interrupted presentations in an effort to center themselves and their issues, as I have so often seen in my own denominational gatherings.
I never saw anyone raise their hand to quibble about the finer points of language: therefore, we got a lot done and on schedule.
Each session of the whole ended with great music, which cued the crowd to move out of the space and to the next thing.

A few observations I had about image, power and authority:
This movement is about dismantling empire, which means finding the hidden connections between money, law enforcement and government policy, revealing them and challenging them.
This movement is about refusing to remain silent in the face of criminalization of Americans and those who live and work here from other countries.
This movement is about interrupting and disrupting systems of racial profiling, systemic oppression, mass incarceration and the deportation (“kidnapping”) of undocumented workers from our communities.

Do you see these people messing around in sloppy Tshirts, scraggly, filthy hair and drooping hippie skirts?
Of course not.
Do you see these organizers shuffling around with their dirty toes hanging out of beat up sandals, patched up jeans and shabbier garments than they can afford to wear, assuming they’ll be given a respectful hearing from the power structures of this country no matter how unkempt and unself-respecting they look?
Of course not.

To look that way is an expression of privilege.
To think that you can work to challenge a corrupt DA or county sheriff or persuade a recalcitrant chief of police to come to the table for a conversation when that person is dressed in an impeccable suit or a uniform and you look like you just rolled out of bed is a tactical error, an insult to everyone involved, and an immediate give away that you’re playing.

Serious people don’t look like they’re playing.
They know better.

I don’t see one person here in comfy North Face or LL Bean sporty gear, because we’re not going hiking.
I didn’t see one woman here with a corduroy jumper or A-line button down skirt, or a sweatshirt and no make-up and chino capris, because we’re not on a road trip to see the grandkids.
I didn’t see anybody in a super hipster look-at-me get-up, because no one apparently needed that much attention to be focused on themselves.
I didn’t see flowy gauze or any beat-up rainbow backpacks.
I don’t think I saw more than two or three pairs of sneakers, and the ones I saw were nice.

I saw people who were dressed sharp, with care, and look like they live in 2016 and not 1976 or 1996.
I saw people who understand what they’re fighting for, what the stakes are, and who are showing up ready to speak truth to power.

I sang with them, I prayed with them. I took direction from them. I listened to their stories. I took notes on what they presented. I was happy to sit at their feet and just be around them.
People who look self-respecting instill respect in others.

It amazes me how different the entire feeling of this gathering was from those I more frequently attend, with sloppy people shuffling around looking smug because they’re “above” caring about such things as grooming and attire.