Being gray

I found my first gray hair at age 21. I promptly plucked it. I found occasional gray hairs throughout my 20s but they were far enough apart spatially and in frequency that I could keep plucking. In my 30s that became altogether impractical and the word “Clairol” became a regular part of my existence.

Now I’ve decided to do away with the whole dye routine. This brings us to the big question: Why?

It comes down to a few reasons. The first is that I hate dying my hair. It’s messy and stinky and has stained my bathroom cabinets and shower curtain at times. I would just rather not do it.

The second is what the dye is doing to my hair. Curly hair is at its best quite dry and tends towards frizz. Dying it has made it absolutely straw-like. I’d like to see if I could have half-ways healthy hair again – or as healthy as what is basically dead cells can be.

Third is I’m starting to see the beauty of gray and white hair. I’d look at some people who don’t dye and I’d say “dowdy”. But I never stopped to connect the fact that it wasn’t simply that they weren’t dying their hair, it was also that their whole appearance – hairstyle and clothes – was dated. They didn’t look like they were putting their best selves forward. I started to notice gray and white haired women that keep themselves up, and I realized that it had little to do with hair colour. My sister-in-law recently stopped dying and she looks amazingly awesome. Ditto a woman I met through work – no dye, and she looks professional, dignified, and actually quite young.

But graying is associated with aging as no matter when one starts to get gray hair, it increases in amount as we age. At forty I’m coming to terms with the fact that statistically speaking, my life is coming to its half-way mark. Ain’t no way of getting around that. I set my mind to embracing being forty. I look back at what I was like, and life was like, at twenty and thirty and I think there is no way I’d want to be there again. I appreciate the wisdom and perspective that comes with age and how it has opened me up to freedom and joy. I have become increasingly aware, however, of the cognitive dissonance within myself about aging. I want to reject society’s idolization of youth, but every time I purchase a box of dye I am literally buying into it.

Another reason is frank curiosity. I have been reading the book Going Gray by Anne Kreamer and she noted that before allowing her gray to come in, she didn’t actually know what she looked like. I don’t actually know what I look like. I’d like to.

When I first started to muse about going gray on Facebook my wonderful cousin-in-law encouraged me not to, saying that I will have lots of years to be grey. She’s got a point. But this also isn’t an irreversible decision. I can change my mind next week and buy my usual dark blonde. I can change my mind at eighty and colour my hair purple with green stripes. I’m free. And for the next while, I want to be free of dye.

Discourse for disillusioned, disconnected disciples

I've had a thought for awhile about the way I have been experiencing the church culture, and the common messages I've heard about many others. I've decided to put it out there and see what kind of response I get.

What I hear from many people is a general disillusionment and disconnection from the institutional church. Responses vary from gritting one's teeth and keeping going to trying a new place to stopping going all together (with or without a sense of guilt). But no response seems to satisfy.

People seem to understand that the form of church doesn't seem to be meshing with the function. But few of us have many ideas about how to approach the issue for ourselves.

My mind was really going on this yesterday, which could have been the Holy Spirit and could have been the sleeplessness from T3s. But I came up with the above phrase above: "Discourse for disillusioned, disconnected disciples". The idea is simple: start gathering people together who are in a similar place, in hopes that through the conversation, we can start to make sense of our situations and figure out how to address it.

What this is:

• a chance to talk about our experiences
• a chance to dialogue about our thoughts
• a chance to vision what the future can look like and get support for whatever we may feel God puts on individual's hearts

What this is not:

• this is not to start a local body/house church
• this is not a permanent fixture, but a meeting that could happen an indeterminent number of times, depending on how it is meeting a need.

So, I put it out there, and would like to hear back from people if it is something that interests you. This is an invitation that can be passed along to others.

Clothing matters

I've been reading "Real Sex" by Lauren Winner, which is primarily a reflection on the Christian virtue of chastity but viewed in a larger context. Two chapters have been of particular interest: "Lies our culture tells about sex" and "Lies the church tells about sex".

For the former, one of the lies Winner lists is "How you dress doesn't matter". Of this she writes, "[Modesty] bears discussign because we seem, as a society, to be losing the ability to discern why clothes matter , and what clothing is appropriate when."

She tells a story of when she went shopping for clothes for a friend's 5-year-old girl while her friend was recupreating from surgery. "All the affordable shops...specialize in revealing outfits and tight skirts. Wealthy daughters, whose parents can fford to shop at Hanna Andersson and Nordstrom, still get little girls clothes...But we apparently expect the ir less-well-off cousins to start dressing for sex early."

She addresses the belief that women, through their clothes, are singularly responsible for male sexual behaviour (the old, "She dressed like that she's asking for it) and rejects it, while pointing out that how we, as both women and men dress, do affect the opposite sex. In other words, she makes the true statement that we have influence, and should take that influence seriously, while not stretching that to mean that we are responsible. She points out that the marketplace bears the most responsibility, which I agree with. I have noticed in the last few years that it is becoming harder and harder to find clothes that don't put my breasts on display.

What I found most interesting was her take on casual fridays. "Maybe I'm a glutton for consistency, but it seems to me that if it is important for people to dress up four days of the week - because formal clothing truly shapes how we comport ourselves, how we understand our work and our duty - then it is important for us to dress up on Friday's too. Conversely, if employers find tha tpoeple ar ehappier, work better, and are more present wehn dresse din blue jeans, then we shoudl scothc he silly dres codes the other foudn days...Eiother we're folling ourselves on Fridays, or we're folling ourselves the other four days."

The part I found myself disagreeing with was when she talked about dressing up for church.Noting that dress has changed from formal to informal in the past few decades, she says, "Perhaps we've erred on the side of casual. I've notice dthat I worship differently when I'm wearing more formal, fancy clothes. I'm more inclined toward reverence." I don't necessarily disagree that clothes affect our attitudes in worship, but I don't think we've erred on the side of casual. Having spent a significant portion of my adult life in a church which rightly emphasized making sure we were a welcoming place for people who are poor, I can't imagine many of those people feeling comfortable coming into an atmosphere filled with formal clothes when such things are beyond their financial means. I think it distracts from worship, however, to see someone's thong sticking up from the back of her jeans when we stand up to sing a song.

In the summary: "There is, it seems to me, a certain power in modest dressing, an assertion that though my body is beautrful, I am more than a sex object desinged for your passing entertainment. But the power of dressing is also the power of narrative. For our clothes tell stories, and it would be naive and irresponsible to pretned otherwise."

Revolution

I've been reading a fascinating book, "Here Comes Everybody" by Clay Shirky (wouldn't Clay Shirky be a great name for a band?)

Here's a quote that really stuck with me:

"The hallmark of revolution is that the goals of the revolutionaries cannot be contained by the institutional structure of the existing society. As a result, either the revolutionaries are put down, or some of those institutions are altered, replaced or destroyed."

I think of a lot of different different things when I read this quote. First, I think of the emerging church. The emergin church has a lot of definitions, the way I see it is an examination of the form of church and whether or not it helps or hinders the function. I think the emerging church is a kind of revolution. Some are trying to put it down by talking and writing about it negatively. But the goal - a well-functioning church - is not being met by current church forms. Churches will change or die or become irrelevant, but there will be different forms and more of them in the coming decades.

I also think about child welfare. There is so much politics and pride in the practice of protecting children that the real purpose gets missed, and the children who die in care are just the tip of the iceberg of so many stories that never make it to the front pages or the web logs. Where there are revolutionaries - different voices - they are often easily put down. I was. Foster parents who object get their kids taken away, so they remain silenced about the issues for the sake of the children. It makes me wonder what needs to happen so that a true revolution can take place in child welfare so that institutions change.

I also think about unfettered capitalism and corporations and their results: the widening of the gap between rich and poor, the undermining of rights for the poor and the middle class, a ever increasing number of poor people, environmental degradation. I think part of what needs to happen for a revolution to take place is for people to have an understanding that the rich and powerful cannot be depended on to do the right thing for all of society and that there are other options. Then there needs to be enough coordination to affect governments for change. With the web we may now have the tools to do that.