Greetings Dear Ones!

I’m turning into a plaid flannel shirt. Every time I happen to look down these days, I seem to be wearing the same shirt. It defines the days, signals their beginnings and endings, when the Summer makes no sense of the sky and we find ourselves heading to bed in broad daylight. We are approaching Solstice and only one dog in particular seems to know what time it is. (hint: It’s Supper Time!) I look down at the soft plaid and know what I must be doing. It’s that little bit of warmth I delight in at the beginning of the mornings and the ends of the evenings when I go about my chores with the animals. It is as comforting as the routine itself and makes me less of a traveling buffet for mosquitoes. Days are beginning and ending all the time, in quick succession now, so I seem to be forever in this shirt, carrying buckets of feed and water, locking up or freeing the wee souls in my care. Recently, I draped the shirt over a nearby fence and one of the more near-sighted sheep called to it for twenty minutes, hoping the shirt would come feed it. With social distancing measures still in place, there is no need to look cute, or even clean, so the slacker in me has adopted this habit.

The word “habit” is an archaic word for dress or clothing. It makes me think of religious orders and how nuns told us their garments were “habits.” Apparently, like me, they had the habit of wearing the exact same thing every day. These settled and regular tendencies certainly reduce decision fatigue! Clothing worn in accordance with certain practices, traditions, and significance helps us identify ourselves with our missions and personal humility and dedication. My twin, diurnal missions are to feed the animals and avoid offering blood sacrifices to the resident bug populations. Feeding the sheep is a deeply holy ceremony (Were we not told specifically in the Gospels to feed sheep?) Certainly, they feel it is deeply significant, though it often lacks the dignity and reverence one might hope for—there is as much bawling, pushing, and shoving as at a church jumble sale.

Usually, summer is when I become a pair of work jeans held up by dirt, sweat, and strong rivets—unaware of how fragrant of meadow and manure I am—until I enter the closed air of a building at the end of the day. Like most blissful and ignorant people, I have no idea how much history I have, um “behind” me. Originally designed for miners in the 1870’s, jeans as we know them became the trendy clothing of youth subculture, greasers, and rebels in the 1950’s. (By the 1980’s they were the standard-issue daily wear of overheated, decidedly UN-trendy and dejected farm girls in Pennsylvania told to go pick rocks out of their parent’s pastures in July.) For centuries, the fabric itself—a sturdy cloth of cotton warp and woolen weft used primarily for work clothes—was made in several European cities. In Genoa, Italy, it became known as “genes,” which may be the origin of “jeans.” If the fabric originated in Nimes, France, it was known as “from Nimes” (de nimes), which is probably how we came to have the word denim. Unbeknownst to most of us, the history of the whole world slumbers next to our tender skin, staining it blue when we sneak a dip in a rain barrel to cool off.

I have also spent a good deal of time as a uniform…Being a uniform gives me slightly more discipline than I have otherwise. I tend to become obedient and faithful, which is a blessing if you want me to do things like social studies homework, staying quiet during study halls, or serving you coffee when you order it . I look down and see someone else, looking like the person sitting next to me, and the person after that, and the person after that…all in rows like the optical illusion one gets from looking in two parallel mirrors at the same time. Are they all me? Are none of them me? Who can tell? Please don’t think I am mocking uniforms. I am not. Uniforms are useful for making one feel Knowledgeable, crisp, and Efficient, which are things that do not come naturally to me. People in uniform generally look More Important than the rest of us. Official. Even a third-grader in a navy pinafore with an emblem on it knows this. The problem with becoming a uniform, of course, is that I am no longer myself. I am in danger of losing my ability to act as an individual, to stand up against what the people who issued my uniform may be telling me to do.

A couple times a year, I become an apron. My job is to feed people—hundreds of people several times a day—things that “link their bodies with their souls,” as my grandma used to say. That apron defines me from the hours before dawn while I make scones, until long after midnight when I stop stumbling in circles, wondering where I could possibly have misplaced thirty pounds of Tofu. I wash the apron every night and put it on each morning. I LIVE in it. When the weekend is over, I gratefully yet wistfully fold that part of myself and store it in a pot the size of a cauldron until the next time.

Certain, magical nights each season, I become nothing more than a fluttering black, green, or purple dress, with all of Life as I know it a kaleidascope churning clock-wise to the count of eight. My soul extends to the swirling hem of my long, full-circle skirt, caressing the legs and bodies of my fellow dancers. I sway, swing, and swirl as a living embodiment of melody meeting movement. I am pure fabric held before a fan, flickering like flame.

On dark, hollow, unromantic nights I become my grandmother’s blue furry bathrobe—waiting for a phone call or the dawn, waiting for a stomach to stop aching, a child’s fever to break, a wounded Love to live or die. I made this bathrobe for Nana more than twenty years ago, shortly before her death, and it was given back to me as a memento when they cleaned out her closets. There is nothing remotely flattering about this robe that makes me resemble a wooly, anaphylactic Smurf but I love it. In times of trouble, it is as strong and silent as the moon, as deeply feminine and resilient as big hips—which it definitely accentuates in the moonlight. It provides a safe container for both Faith and Unknowing, and holds together all the shattering fragments of a life in the Dark. It is as if her hand is still upon my shoulder saying All will be Well as something exhausted releases its suffering and begins to sleep.

All these clothes I am and many more. But I am not just my clothes. I am not even my skin. I am a fiercely strong and fragile, tragically beautiful, fantastically ugly Something Else, as are you. As is each of us. I cannot be summed up merely by the color of my collar (plaid).

Being Naked is very scary. Like Eve, when I look at my own nakedness, I rush for the fig leaves and a thimble, or the nearest blue furry bathrobe. I positively hate looking in the mirror. Lately, I have had my eyes opened to some horrific things about the fabulous Privilege it is to be me, in all my many outfits. I am also seeing some incredibly beautiful acts of grace and courage from those attempting to teach me. As a country, we are stripping down, below the level of what we wear, below the color of our skin, to find essential commonality as human beans. We’re having to look at some tough stuff but it’s necessary in order to change out of our most filthy habits—the unconsciousness that cloaks and veils true evil in our land. You would have thought we might have learned all this long before but we are a stiff-necked people. We still refuse to admit that that spandex should only by worn by those fighting crime and Dutch cyclists.

When I was very small, I was sure I heard the priest tell us that we were all human beans, all equal and made in the image and likeness of God. (I found it very interesting that God was a bean.) Being a Human Bean is the hardest thing I have ever done. Being the covering, the shell, is easy. We clothe ourselves daily in our history, our habits and traditions… our worries and our celebrations… When we see what we are wearing, we know who we are serving. We look at each other’s “surfaces” and make assumptions, sometimes appropriately, sometimes not. But when we start to grow, those shells need to break. We are seeds. We are here to grow. Growth means change.

We all fall into these ruts around everything from what we wear to who we are and how we expect others to behave. Sometimes this is a result of perceived duty, sometimes for convenience, often due to sheer laxity and lack of imagination. Our “habits” no longer “become” us in ways we might wish. Tragically, we become them instead. It’s time for a good long look in the mirror. I sheared the sheep this week and they are still sheep, despite their radically altered appearances. We Beans, however, we could be really different if we choose to be.

Let the Mending continue, my dear and darling ones! Take courage. Thank you for your Good Work.

With sew much love,

Nancy