Pastors, please invest in a pair of clergy-appropriate all-weather boots. There will be occasions upon which you will actually be called out into rain and snow and ice to minister to people, and at those times there is no reason you should show up looking prepared to dig ditches or to lead them on a hiking expedition. Making a house call is one thing. Visiting the hospital is also one thing. Presiding over a commital of human remains is another thing entirely. When you are called up on to such sacred offices, please do NOT show up in
Gortex boots,
Boots with brown tops and white or tan rubber soles,
L.L. Bean duck boots
or colorful rain wellies.

You should own something like this,
(Le Canadienne, expensive)

Or something like this,

(Yes, I hate them too, but you don’t wear them with a skirt, for heaven’s sake)

Or for very outdoorsy types, even something like this by Columbia,

They’re really not dressy enough but at least they’re all black, you can’t see the drawstring under the pants, they won’t make you look unprepared and disrespectful, and like the other two options they are thoroughly waterproof.

I’ve had the same ugly black snowboots for eleven years. I have one ankle-length pair by Totes that I got for $9.99, and an ugly but very warm pair of knee-high black snow boots that I found for under $30 on a sale rack somewhere and can wear with skirts (not attractively, but I wear pumps at the funeral and quickly change into the snow boots before getting into the hearse for the ride to the cemetery).

Wardrobe stables, darlings!! See to them!

It can’t be helped, my sweetlings. All you can do is your best: choose simple, classic, clean clothing in light, breathable fabrics, scrub down well in the shower, and keep your hair clean and off your face. You too, fellas. And go light on the hair product, which has a nasty way of melting out of your hair and making its way down your forehead.

PeaceBang has a few little favorite little helpers on the muggiest days and she is happy to share them avec vouz, plural!

1. Keep a spray bottle of distilled water with a few drops of organic rose oil in it in the fridge and spritz your face and hair whenever you get a chance. Ahhh! (If you’ve ever been to a dinner party at PeaceBang’s, you’ve seen her do this in the midst of cooking.)

2. An easy ‘do for long or mid-length haired gals: Part your hair on the side, put it back in a high ponytail, tuck that under into a messy or clean bun and keep everything neat up front with a slim satin or cotton headband.

3. Keep your face absolutely bare of any make-up except for sunscreen, a bright pop of lipgloss, waterproof liquid eyeliner (if you’re the eyeliner type, and God knows I am) and waterproof mascara. This makes your features stand out and helps you to look alert and vibrant even when you feel like a Wilting Wilma.

4. Spritz a very light cologne on a clean, white cotton hankie and use it to dab at your brow and chin when the greasies threaten to get you later in the afternoon. Dab, don’t rub!

5. Splurge on a fantabulous minty body wash by C.O. Bigelow. It’s available at Bath & Body Works and since PeaceBang had to quit even iced DECAF coffee (*sob*), it’s the only thing that gets her going on some humid mornings. This isn’t just minty and refreshing, my friends… it’s MINTY and REFRESHING!!

This seems like a good place to mention a pet peeve of mine. Here at seminary there are a number of women with “shoe issues.” Some are young, some are older. They are talked about behind their backs, especially when they are walking around the chapel. What are their issues? Well, there are three main ones -

1) Trendy shoes that draw attention away from the service and onto the wearer. In our tradition (Episcopal) one does not walk around in black cassock or white alb with anything other than black or maybe dark brown or dark gray shoes. I know acolytes get away with it all the time, but we are not acolytes. We are preparing to be priests. Even if that means buying one pair of “church shoes” that are conservative black flats, we should do it, and change back into the cute, outfit matching shoes in the sacristy after the service.

2) Loud, clomping shoes. Again, distracting. We have one student who went out to officiate at a service recently and you could hear the clomp, clomp, clomp over the music as she walked. Hello. Again, it’s about the service, not about us. It also makes women seem less professional.

3) Wearing heels you cannot walk well or safely in. Wear heels that work for you, or professional but less high heeled shoes. We all look silly tripping off our heels. Again, it’s distracting and unprofessional. You don’t see the male priests falling off their shoes. Let’s not do it either.

Let me add, Diane, that my only disagreement with your advice is not to talk about our sister seminarians behind their backs. Talk about them TO THEIR FACES. Pull them over, say, “Honey, you sounded like Mr. Ed clomping around out there, you NEED to get a pair of quieter shoes. Let’s go shopping after Homiletics class on Thursday!” Or, “Sister, my sister, I love those heels you’ve got on but I was watching you just now and you’re just destined to break your ankle one of these days. Those aren’t suitable for this work, girl, and someone needed to tell you. I love you enough to be the one.”

If you say it with love and care, she might still get mad but at least you’ve made the transition from petty gossip to supportive future colleague. And that’s good for the soul.

Transitions are hard. It is hard to transition from being a stay-at-home mama to being, for instance, a working woman in the corporate world. It is hard to transition from being a working person to a retired person. It is challenging to transition from being a movie star to being a rehab resident. It is hard to transition from being a seminarian to an ordained clergyperson.

What happens when one of your friends doesn’t seem to be making the transition well? You must pull him or her aside and say this:

“Honey Lamb, I love ya like a house afire, but your look is still too Hanes-oriented to make the professional scene. You’re undermining your own authority by wearing shapless sweatclothes, and it still doesn’t work if they’re skirts or pants or shirts with buttons; they’re not appropriate. Please let me go shopping with you and we’ll make a super fun day of it and try on tons of stuff — even stuff you don’t think will look good on you — we’re going to explore, not necessarily to purchase — and we’re going to find the more beautiful, polished YOU I know is in there. And you’re going to agree to this or I am going to send Marvin the Torch to your closet and there will be a Very Tragic Accident there.”

The point is, you must be blunt. You gotta be brave, ya gotta be bold, ya gotta be stronger. That’s not just a great karaoke song by Des’ree, it’s also a truth about friendship relationships. Friends do not let friends leave the house with muffin tops and rear-end cleavage. They call their sisters on dresses that have become a Festival of Inappropriate Sharing and offer to loan a camisole if necessary. Dudes pull their dude pals aside and say, “Let me loan you my electric razor, pal. Better yet, I’ll come over ten minutes earlier tonight and shave those gorilla hairs off the back of your neck for you, which, by the way, wouldn’t hurt to scrub now and then.” This is a given. But God also helps those who help themselves, and those of us who know that we’re going to be making an important life transition will do ourselves a world of good if we prepare earlier, rather than later, for that transition. For ministers-to-be, this means:

1. Get out of your sweats and jeans once in awhile. Own at least a couple pairs of pants that could serve in a professional setting, and know what size and cuts flatter you and FIT. Why wait until pre-candidating week, when you’ll already have enough on your mind? What’s your dress size? Hate dresses? What’s your skirt size? Fellas, do you own at least once decent tie? Get on it. Sports coat, a few decent shirts? Borrow if you have to. Develop a spectrum of looks and make some conscious choices about where and when they work for you. When in doubt, overdress a bit.

2. Assemble your grooming and/or cosmetics products as soon as you can, and start a routine of using them. Sure, you can go to class with witchy dry hair or scraggly facial hair, crust in your eyes and pallid, puffy skin that identifies you as someone who hasn’t seen the light of day since you started Intermediate Greek, but don’t get used to yourself that way. Step it up when you can. Don’t start bad grooming habits in seminary and expect it to be easy to break them once you’re a working pastor. This leads to the type of whining that causes PeaceBang to want to spank you: “I don’t have tiiiiiime to style my hair! I don’t have tiiiiiime to wear blush or lipstick!” Well then, poochikins, you don’t have tiiime to project an image of leadership, pride in your calling and dignity of the pastoral office, either, and PeaceBang doesn’t have tiiiime for that attitude!

3. As early as possible, start an organizational system for your liturgical and programmatic work. The first time someone asks you to preach, start a file for that service under theme or date or however you choose to do it. File away prayers, file chalice lightings, invocations, funeral/memorial readings, baby blessings, orders of service …. develop a system and start using it devotedly at the earliest possible moment. This isn’t about your external beauty but your interior calm when you start leading and crafting worship yourself, and (pssst), if you have an organized study (PeaceBang’s books are arranged, for instance, by subject all over her parsonage), you’ll have the tiiiiime you need before a wedding or Sunday morning service to iron your shirt and shine your shoes, fill in your eyebrows and apply some lip gloss, do ten minutes of deep belly breathing, and show up poised, peaceful and prepared.

As the world gets more chaotic and uncertain, my doves, we must be ever-more-conscious, centered and grounded representatives of HaShem, the divine Presence. If we come shooting through the door in drab jeans, hair sprouting from our ears, white gym socks where there should be black dress socks, faces and bodies that tell a tale of self-neglect, we contribute to the sense that God is not in His/Her heaven and all is not right with the world.

Tell a different tale. Tell it with your very being. Start today. Go be beautiful.

Hi PeaceBang,
I love your website! Your answer about CPE-wear gives me hope that you will answer another “student” question. I am doing field ed in a (UCC) church this fall, and have found out that I need to buy a robe for worship. I do not have the first idea what to buy, and am not getting a lot of info from other sources. There are a lot of styles out there and basically I do not want to make a $400 mistake (did I mention that I am a student?). Can you give me some pointers? Any help you can give will be greatly appreciated! Of course, I need to order it immediately in order to get it on time… Thanks!

Dear student,
Thank you for reaching out in your moment of pastoral panic! But not to worry, peach pie!

PeaceBang may get a lot of flack for this, but she firmly believes that there is absolutely NO reason for you to make an expensive purchase at this point in your ministerial training. PeaceBang is, in fact, disturbed by the number of seminarians who have not yet seen even a regional sub-committee to help them discern their fitness for the ordained ministry, but who are nevertheless buying themselves robes and stoles. This seems to PeaceBang to be putting the cart before the horse, ecclesiastically speaking, and is presumptuous at the very least. Call me old-fashioned, but until a congregation votes to ordain one to the ministry, why should any seminarian representing a congregational tradition own vestments? Being accepted into an M.Div program is not a green light to start designing and ordering one’s vestments. Just because we feel a call to the ordained ministry does not mean that that call will be validated by the rest of the world.

(Speaking of which, PeaceBang found to her horror an article she wrote 12 or so years ago in which she described herself as a minister. This before she had even started her M.Div program!! I’m not sure if this was a typo or editorial misunderstanding or I’m getting the years wrong or what, but it certainly illustrates that PeaceBang herself was prone to the jump-the-gun enthusiasm she now sternly warns others against. Learn from my ignorance, my doves! I knew so little of congregational polity back then).

But that’s not you, dear panicked student. You are further along in your preparation and have secured a field ed placement. Congratulations and mazel tov. What you may chose to do is to sweetly say to the teaching congregation, “I’m looking forward to ordering my first robe at graduation/ordination, as is customary. If the congregation thinks I should wear a pulpit gown during worship, I would be happy to, but that’s not in my budget right now. Perhaps the church, committed as it is to being a teaching congregation, would like to buy some to have for their student ministers to wear? Here’s a catalog I just happen to have handy.”

If they don’t bite (and they should), ask around. A simple choir robe is absolutely appropriate for your needs. Have it hemmed to your height and save the momentous decisions about your own “real” robe for later, when you’re ordained and are ready to make such an important investment (forgive the pun).

My goodness, what an anxious letter THIS is! Let’s see what this Job Seeking Reader has to say:

Dear PeaceBang,
I’m going for a job interview this weekend and I’m freaking out mildly and I dont know what it says about my life that I keep wailing to myself ‘PEACEBANG is the ONLY one who can HELLLLP’ but that’s the truth of the matter.

So, what do you suggest? I need an outfit that can:
1. ride in the car for three hours
2. go to lunch at a nice-ish restaurant
3. go for a walking tour of the neighborhood and then one of the church (this second part is scheduled to last an hour! How is that possible? I’m thinking that we must be hitting the attic and the boiler room which for sure means dust…)
4. interview for 1.5 hours
5. go to dinner at someone’s house

Do I wear the same thing all day? Or do I change out of travel clothes for the interview part? And then change again for the dinner after the interview? I feel like I’m going to the Oscars.

FYI: [The weather where I am going] will either be 40 degrees and raining or 70 degrees and sunny, but most likely both of these, and all the degrees in between, too.

Also, at the meals, what do I eat? Do I pull a Scarlett and have a big meal before so they don’t see what a chow hound I am, and also so that I can TALK without my mouth being full?

Any wisdom you can throw my way -confidentially if it’s ok as I”m job hunting on the sly more or less - would be so much appreciated.”

Well, my dear, that is indeed a doozie, and PeaceBang and her readers are *here for you.* We have ALL been there. We feel you.

First of all, if you can possibly steal a few moments to freshen up and change after your journey of three hours, do. At least spritz your face with some rose water, take a few moments alone to stretch and breathe, brush your teeth, blow your nose and apply fresh lipstick.
You’ll feel ready for anything. You’ll BE ready for anything!

I think a good outfit choice would be a patterned skirt (maybe an Indian print, nothing too florally-cutesy) , a classic cotton tank with some spandex in it to give it shape and dressiness factor, and a cardigan. You can leave the cardigan off on the trip so it will be fresh when you arrive. Wear a nice necklace, and keep the colors up top deep and neutral, which projects more authority and leadership than light colors (and certainly pastels!).

A nice pair of trousers with a lovely, colorful blouse and lightweight blazer would also work, just make sure your fabrics have some poly or spandex in them for wrinkle-management. Belts can also make blouses look very sharp, and a belted shirt or blouse under an open blazer is a nice look.

You might wear comfortable but nice sandals if it’s not raining too hard– not Clarkes, but something more dressy that you can still walk around comfortably in. I noticed a slew of choices at Macy’s this past weekend. A really nice, substantial flat should also be fine.

Don’t plan to change clothes only because your interviewing team may not have scheduled time for you to do so, and you want to feel that whatever outfit you choose can take you confidently through the entire ordeal… um, I mean, EXPERIENCE!

If you do get some time alone before dinner, by all means shower, change, do whatever helps you to re-energize, but you may just get ten minutes. And wouldn’t it be kinder to yourself to spend that ten minutes breathing and praying and discerning rather than scrambling into a new set of duds and worrying if things match?

If you want to change shoes for dinner, that would be nice. Sometimes I’ll wear comfortable walking-around shoes at a day event and then just change my earrings and shoes for a dinner appearance.

As for eating before you eat, it’s only true that you will be doing more talking and energetically reacting than actually dining. If you’re hungry, there’s nothing wrong with having soup or snacks beforehand on your own. Your digestion will be better for it, and so will your presence at dinner. And if you’re seen picking at your food, you can always say you’re too nervous to eat. Which is true! You’re too nervous to eat… in front of a group of people who are interviewing you for a ministerial position! Riiight?
But honey, don’t snarf down a bucket o’ chicken or a big bag of Taco Bell before dinner: you’ll just look puffy and you might get a grease spot on your blouse.

Seriously, though, you can always write to me (my e-mail address is always on the margins of the page, kittycats) and send photos.
This is a big occasion and we want you to feel 100% the shining star you are.

Blessings, and let us know how it goes!!
Kiss of Peace,
PB

(P.S. Readers, the photo is random. It is not a photo of our anonymous and reverend letter writer!)

We are expecting a Nor’easter tomorrow here in the land of PeaceBang, so she wants to get out and about today and make some visits that the snow may prevent later in the week. First, though, some java and this inquiry from a West Coast reader:

“Dear Peacebang:
I am a ministry candidate and a big fan of your fashion blog. I have a question that I am sure you can answer. I do campus ministry with college students. We are talking about funky and casual west coast college kids,not preppy ones. I am middle aged and have a college age kid myself. When Igo on campus, or to a local coffee shop, to meet with college kids I am not sure what I should wear. I would feel out of place with this crowd of ratty jeans and second hand sweatshirts in my “minister clothes”, but I don’t want to be one of those middle age people who pretends they are 19 in order to look approachable. What do you advise when ministering to the very casual young adult community?
Faithfully yours, [Lovely and Earnest Candidate For the Unitarian Universalist Ministry]

Dear Lovely and Earnest Candidate for the Unitarian Universalist Ministry,

What a wonderful question. Most of us, even if we do not spend all of our ministry with younger folks, spend some of it with them (or should, if we don’t!). It is my experience that we all agonize to some extent about how to look ministerially appropriate yet approachable to the youth or young adults. Sometimes we err on the side of “hipper than thou” and try to out-grunge the kids. This is a big mistake, and those clever fish ain’t bitin’. They know that you’re not an age peer, and all the ratty sherpa hats and concert t-shirts in the world can’t change that.

This is not to say, however, that you shouldn’t dress for your community. You should, but in an age-appropriate way. Don’t try to look like them, but do consider what values they are expressing in their own clothing and weave some of those ideas into your own look.

On most college campuses where Unitarian Universalists have a campus ministry (and it ain’t Bob Jones University, duckies), I am guessing that many students express creativity, global consciousness, a dose of non-conformist rebellion, and insouciant, youthful poverty in their outfits. While you can skip the non-conformist rebellion and insouciant, youthful poverty elements in your own clothing, Lovely and Earnest, see how you might incorporate creativity, individuality and global consciousness into your look.

For instance, where your backpacking-across-Asia students might walk around in ankle-length print cotton skirts purchased in Bali, you can keep an eye out for inexpensive accessories that communicate a similar vibrancy and adventuresome spirit.
Learn to peek into stores you’ve never peeked in before, like those hippie stores on campus. Therein you’ll find loads of inexpensive options that zoom your look without requiring that you empty your closet and fill it with an entirely new wardrobe.

In fact, cupcakes, none of us should EVER feel that we have to acquire an entirely new wardrobe for a new position. If (and this is a big IF) your clothing choices are professionally appropriate, expressive of your sense of self and look good on you in the first place (remember, I said IF!), you can adjust to new positions with subtle jzujzing of your look, not a whole make-over.

So, Lovely and Earnest Campus Minister, a few examples to give you an idea: get a pair of huge silver Indian earrings and wear them with a fitted, nice denim jacket. Wear a pair of nice jeans tucked into knee-high fleece boots (I hear that UGGS are fantastically comfortable, but tres cher!), but top the jeans off with a classic merino turtleneck and big pendant (which should hit you at the top of your rib cage). Be a grown-up, but a grown-up who signals by what she wears that she’s inspired by the youthful energy around her.

Keep your fabrics interesting, colorful, international, creative. Stay away from florals and pastels. Get your hair cut somewhere edgy. Remember: you’re not trying to look like them, you’re trying to express affiliation and admiration through your own appearance.

PeaceBang’s Rule of Intergenerational Sartorial Understanding:

When ministering to another generation, dress to express admiration, not emulation.

Let’s take it in another direction. Say you’re a 20-something pastor and preparing to address the Ladies League, all of whose members are 50+ years older than you. To show admiration for their generation, dress up. Iron your blouse, boys and girls. Fellas, shave. Ladies, wear a slip. Wear pantyhose. Gents, consider wearing a tie. Gals, get out the pearls if you’ve got them. Everyone, shine your shoes. Don’t flaunt your tattoos or your piercings: in this setting, they’ll just be distracting, not evidence of your individuality.

You attend to these details not because these wise elders will judge or condemn you for not doing so, but to show your respect for the values of this generation, and to show your respect for these particular people.

So, Lovely and Earnest, thanks for writing and let us know how it goes. And remember as you build your professional wardrobe that you may not be a campus chaplain for the rest of your ministerial life, so lay in some pearls, too.

Kiss of peace! *smooch*

PeaceBang has been thinking about that tonight (because she’s obviously not writing her paper or her exam now, IS SHE?), and she has gotten a bit stuck on the notion of modesty. The reason for that is that PeaceBang isn’t exactly the modest type. PeaceBang isn’t at all modest, if you’d like to know God’s own truth. She is actually a big-mouthed sassy broad, and having made it through ten happy and good years in ministry, she must conclude that personal modesty is not absolutely key in surviving the parish with your good name and vocational integrity intact.

And yet she herself used the word “modesty” today in class, which bears some explaining.

Ministerial modesty in dress and in personal sharing isn’t about maintaining some faux primness about yourself, as though you were a Victorian-era lady who might need to be revived by smelling salts at the sight of a bare ankle.

That isn’t what PeaceBang means.

Ministerial modesty is more about maintaining a modicum of personal privacy around yourself as a way to respect the fact that so much of your heart and soul belongs to your church, you’ve got to keep some of yourself to yourself.
This can be a win-win. On one hand, you need privacy. Putting care and intention into your appearance helps prepare you for public consumption, for lack of a better word. It establishes a boundary: This is my private life, this is my public life. On the other hand, when your people look at you, they want to see you but they also want to see the best of themselves in you. If you have too much leg showing or dirt caked in the treads of your Timberlands, they can’t do that.

We talk a lot about appropriate sexual boundaries in the church, and about boundaries in general. And we should. We need to. Ministry is a terribly, awesomely intimate business. Not only do we share the spiritual and emotional lives of our parishioners, we share their incarnational struggles. They are of one piece.

We don’t think of this very often, but the truth is, we minister to our people body and soul. We visit with them, we hold their hands, we anxiously await test results together, we help them sit up in bed, we sometimes feed them soup or Jell-O. We hold the baby while they move their C-section-sore bodies to the bathroom and back. We anoint them before death, we wipe tears, and sweat, from their faces. We smoothe their hair, and sometimes brush it. We gently pull covers over them when we know they feel too exposed to our gaze. We clear their snotty tissues and half-drunk cups of juice off that tiny stupid hospital bed table so we have somewhere to put our Bible. We keep hand sanitizer in our car, our office, and in our purses and briefcases because we minister to bodies, not disembodied spirits.

In this work, it is only natural and right that we should be carefully put together, buttoned up, tucked in, clean and pressed and combed. So many of our pastoral duties place us in the presence of the fragility of the human body — its trembling vulnerability, its amazing ability to heal and overcome trauma and disease, and its shocking and sudden betrayals. It is only natural and right that we should want to be beautiful and whole in body and appearance as a sign and symbol of our belief in the beauty and wholeness potential in the human condition.

I guess what I am trying to say is that in some way, our ministerial bodies are not just personal but are also communal. This may be neither rational nor fair, chickens, but that’s just how it is. When one of our beloveds is dying, it’s not just anybody who shows up who can represent the church. It’s when your particular body shows up that the Church is there at bedside. You know, I know it and God knows it. When you become a “Rev.,” your body isn’t just your body anymore. Maybe not fair or rational, but I think that’s how it works.
I wonder if some of our extreme acting out in the physical sense (alcohol addiction, compulsive overeating, sexual abuse, etc.) isn’t an unconscious rebellion against this felt truth.

I figure it this way: only God knows the condition of my soul. My people know what they see, hear, and feel in me. We are all body beings and all we know is the information we get from being bodies together. There’s no reason to want to rebel against that. In fact, we should dress up for it every day! With lipstick and heels, or a suit and tie even sometimes!

In private, it doesn’t matter if my family or my intimates see too much bosom or leg, or chipped nail polish or graying hair or spinach in my teeth or flab cheerfully emerging from the top of my bathing suit.
In a ministerial context, however, these things are inappropriate distractions. They’re not inherently sinful or harmful in and of themselves — of course not, for heaven’s sweet sake! But they are evidence of a kind of unpreparedness, a kind of refusal to rise to the occasion of what the Church is trying to represent, and a staunch denial that the minister’s body represents, on some level, the gathered body.

Simply this: They should be able to see the best of themselves in you. When you walk out the door, be prepared to meet this expectation not only in your heart, but in your physical presence.
If you’re not ready for that, get ready. Vestments and a collar is the very least of it, chickens.

Say you have to make an appearance at a meeting but you’re on your way to a date in the city and don’t want people whispering about your little sexy dress. Leave your stilettoes and big earrings in the car, slip on a pair of sensible shoes, and appear in your trenchcoat. You’re just stopping by, so it’s a perfectly reasonable look.

Say it’s pouring out and you’ve got to go from the church funeral to the cemetery to do the graveside service. Wear your trench, button it up, and you’re appropriately dressed. Do not wear a hat. You don’t need to shiver in your street clothes, nor do you have to get your vestments soaked while some poor schnook from the funeral home tries to keep you dry under an umbrella. Wear your trench and stand under the canopy. If you do get splashed, you won’t look bedraggled. You will maintain proper clerical decorum in your trench. And no, for the love of Erasmus, don’t put a stole over it. Everyone just attended the funeral. They know you’re the presiding minister. Leave the stole OFF.

There are special fancy capes that clergy can wear, but although Boy in the Bands will disagree with me, I tend to think they suit Roman archbishops and cardinals fairly well but they’re just a bit too High Priestly Drag for the average Protestant clergyperson.

Say you get invited to a snazzy affair with lots of bigwigs. All the men and women there will be wearing ermine-lined coats and mink stoles. You wear something simple and elegant and your trench. A trench is always presentable. Don’t try to dress it up with a Burberry’s knock-off scarf from Filenes: the Rich Will Know. You’re a minister. You are storing up your treasures in heaven. Leave your trench as it is and be the somber, yet unchastising, silent reminder that you can’t take it with you.

Say you are going from a wedding to a rehearsal dinner. You think you can wear your Land’s End windbreaker because you’re just walking into the building, for heaven’s sake! Can’t you wear your Land’s End windbreaker?

No, you can’t. You are going to a formal affair. You will be going to many formal affairs in your life as a minister. You may not wear a windbreaker or a polar fleece zip-up or that big warm poncho you got on a mission trip to Chiapas. You need a coat, not a parka, and it needs to be appropriate.

Try to obtain the finest trenchcoat you can afford. The belted style looks good on almost everyone and gentlemen, it should NOT BE TOO SMALL. There is nothing that bespeaks poverty so quickly as a skin tight trenchcoat with too-short arms on a frail elderly man. It makes me want to cry.
Have someone help you with the fit. Make sure it’s neither too long nor too short.

If you live in a colder climate, get a trench with a removable lining.

Cover yourself appropriately or don’t cover yourself at all and risk the frostbite, I say!
Ladies, I adore the cute little trenches we’re seeing now in lime green and bright pink. They’re affordable and they’re darling. Have fun with them, but please, not for a graveside service.

She wrote to me today and said that she wore a black pencil skirt, a smashing pair of Anne Klein black slingbacks (bless her heart), and this sweater:

http://www.anthropologie.com/jump.jsp?itemID=10686&itemType=PRODUCT&iSubCat=266&iMainCat=11

Yes, it’s too expensive for her budget, for yours, and for mine. HOWEVAH, after spending three weeks looking for just the right thing, how much do you it was worth it to her to land this darling item and to know she looked absolutely drop-dead perfect for this important event?

The moral of the story is: if you find something you absolutely adore, that fits you beautifully and fills you with confidence and a sense that you’re dressed just right, buy the damn thing. Buy two. Because I’m telling you, you can always take on another wedding to earn some extra bucks, but you can’t always find something that exquisitely expresses the youness of you.