by Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell

First Unitarian Church

Portland, Oregon

CALL TO WORSHIP

Good morning!

Come into this circle of love and justice.

Come into this community of mercy, holiness, and health. 

Come and you shall know peace and joy.

This morning we’re going to reflect upon the clothing we choose, and what that clothing reveals about us.  Think about what you have on this morning—it was not chosen by accident (or maybe some of you are thinking, “Oh, yes, it was!”)—your choice was intentional: conscious or not, you are making a statement about yourself by the clothing you have on.  Of course part of that choice is determined by the culture at large and by the particular time in history, as we shall see—we’re going to begin the sermon this morning with a fashion show, clothing down through the ages.  Our lovely, and I might add, mature models, are volunteers from the choir.

First we have Susan LeMaster, who shows us a replica of a Victorian wool traveling suit—it is full length with a high neck, long sleeves, and lace trim.  Women wore uncomfortable, restrictive, and no doubt unhealthful fashions, with the tight corsets, because they wished to appear physically attractive, and at the same time morally proper.  Reflecting the sexually repressive ideology of the age, the woman’s body was hidden, covered with a great deal of clothing: layers of underwear and petticoats, dresses with long sleeves, high collars, and a hemline to the ground.  At the same time there was an exaggerated eroticism in the tightly corseted waist, with the exaggerated bosom and hips. 

Fashion changed radically in the 1920s when women bobbed their hair and shortened their skirts—drastically.  Zaida Cooper sports the ultimate flapper regalia in a 1926 vintage black velvet dropped waist dress with embroidered cuffs and hem.  The accompanying feather boa and headband make her ready for dancing the Charleston, or nipping into a speakeasy.  During this era, women favored a youthful, boyish look, and fashions which minimized the breasts and emphasized long, shapely legs.

Alice Tinney models an elegant black crepe dress from the late 1930s.  The Crash of 1929 made the flapper and her jazz-age boyfriend seem irrelevant.  In the ‘30s, manly men and womanly women were admired.  This era ushered in shoulder pads and a style of dress made popular by Hollywood stars such as Joan Crawford, sophisticated and self-assured.

During WW II hemlines became shorter to conserve fabric.  Diane Englert displays a red and black rayon dress with a peplum waist, rhinestone buttons, and ¾ length sleeves.  During the ‘40s there continued to be a well-tailored, womanly look.  Incidentally, you should know that Diane is the one who organized this fashion show for us.

The 1950s ushered in “the new look,” when hemlines dropped again, and more fabric was used, to show an end to rationing.  Elisa Morales is clad in a typical suit of the period.  The masculine cut reflects women trying to hang on to their place in the work force after the soldiers returned home.

The 1960s were the Camelot years, a time of abundance.  There was the counterculture hippie movement, of course, and the flower children, who dressed like children, but establishment figures such as Doris Day and Jackie Kennedy wore clothes like this Lilli Ann designer suit in linen modeled for us by Maryann Roulier.  Vibrant colors and shorter skirts were in vogue

Thank you ladies, for sharing with us these marvelous vintage fashions.

Now, you may be sitting there in your seat—especially if you are a first-time visitor—wondering . . . now just what does this have to do with, uh, religion?  It’s a fair question.  But you see, religion isn’t just what happens at church, or what you find in a holy text, or in some special ritual, though all these things may facilitate religious experience.  Our spirituality is reflected in everything we do, in everything we say, and yes, I would maintain, that it is reflected in what we choose to wear, and how we present ourselves to the world.  Our clothing speaks very deeply of who we are.

Let’s reflect for a moment on the purpose of clothing—ever since Adam and Eve left the Garden—that is, ever since humanoids evolved into humans—we have been covering our nakedness.  So clothing has to do with what we choose to conceal—and also what of ourselves we choose to reveal.  Concealing and revealing.  We need to have the power of that choice.  Recall the humiliation suffered by the prisoners at Abu Ghraib when they were stripped of their clothing, when strange women were allowed to see their private parts.  The same dehumanizing took place with the victims of the Holocaust—their identity as Jews and as human beings was stripped from them, and they were given instead a number, branded like cattle. 

We need to have power over our bodies, and how we choose to present ourselves. And yet what happens when your pre-teen daughter wants to go to school dressed like a hooker?  Adolescence is a time when conformity to the peer group and to commercial pressures is at its height.  Have you been to the mall lately?  Junior-high girls are encouraged to wear clothes that are overtly and seductively sexual—and then we wonder why kids start having sex at such a young age.  Parents, when do you start letting your children decide what to wear?  Is it even important?  You bet it is. 

For adults as well, the culture at large determines much of what is “correct” or “fashionable,” and so none of us starts from scratch—we start from the cultural norm and then we depart from that, if we dare.  Some of what designers and manufacturers want us to wear is absolutely hazardous to our health—for example, the current fashion in women’s shoes, with their stiletto heels and sharply pointed toes.  These shoes are a recipe for serious foot problems—in fact, after age 40, the most common medical problems for women are foot problems.  Fashion is about planned obsolescence and selling goods.

Clothes have socially shared meanings, they are a code language for what we want to say to the world.  Uniforms are an obvious example of this.  Prisoners in orange jump-suits—we can understand this security measure, but you might as well stamp the word “worthless” or “bad” all over the prisoner.  Consider the soldier.  When you have the helmet, the heavy boots, the rifle, the uniform, you have the badge of authority.  You are no longer George Smith, you are the U.S. Army.  We know that in war time soldiers sometimes do things they would not likely do in civilian life—but the uniform permits it.  Or think about the strange alchemy of the costume, the mask.  I used to live in New Orleans, and I can tell you that during Mardi Gras, people put on masks and sometimes a very interesting alter ego emerges.  People behave in ways, naughty ways, that they would never repeat at any other time of the year.  Then at midnight, everything shuts down, and Ash Wednesday arrives, and Lent begins, and repentance.

I wear a kind of uniform—this red robe.  It is grand in style, and makes me appear bigger than I am.  It carries the authority of the minister and of the scholar, because it is also an academic robe.  I always wear a robe when I preach—sometimes in smaller settings, a less formal robe, but always a robe.  Why?  Two reasons.  Because when we come together like this in church, you and I, this is a sacred occasion. We come into this special place, a safe place, where we can leave our burdens behind, and reflect upon the big questions of our lives.  It’s the place where we are reminded of who we are and what we aspire to be.  So I come always giving the best that I’m able to give, and I come wearing the robe to mark this event as “set aside,” as holy.  And the second reason I wear a robe is that people look at women: men—at least, straight men—look at women’s bodies, and women look at women’s clothing and judge it.  I used to have long hair. The day I walked into this pulpit for the first time after I had cut my hair very short, that’s all anybody was looking at—so I said, Okay, let’s forget the theology, let’s first of all talk about the important stuff—my hair.  When I wear a robe, I am de-emphasizing my womanliness, and emphasizing my role as your minister.

I’ve got to share with you—when people see me out of context, they are sometimes shocked.  I think some people think I stay here locked in the church all week, in my red robe.  Anyway, I sat down with some friends in a neighborhood restaurant one day to have lunch, and the young waitress approached our table.  She let out an audible gasp.  She said, “Dr. Sewell, you have friends!  You . . . eat!”  The power of the robe.

We see other “uniforms” on the street all the time—young people wanting community, and so dressing the part: punk, nerd, hip-hop, goth, skinhead, preppie, etc.  There is ethnic dress that sets people apart—the sari, the dashiki.  How do we present ourselves?  How do we want to be known?

Sometimes we go through periods when we are confused about what to wear—for me, those are periods of transition, when I’m moving from one place to another in my life, psychically speaking.  With clothing, the goal, I think, is to reveal our authentic selves at any given time.  I think of Gandhi.  If you’ve read about his life, you know that he went from being a fashionable dandy with a starched white shirt and striped tie when he was a young lawyer in South Africa, to at last wearing simply a loin cloth, as he came into the fullness of his spiritual maturity, leading his people out of British rule.

We want to be known for who we are, and be accepted for who we really are.  I remember as a girl growing up in N. Louisiana, I was separated from my mother, who lived in Cincinnati.  She used to send me boxes of clothing for my birthday and for Christmas—I can still see the boxes, crushed in from the mailing, the name of the store, Shillito’s, printed on top, and bound with cheap ribbon.  Inside would be a frilly dress, with lots of lace and ribbons and bows.  She had no idea of the long-legged, knobby-kneed colt I was at that time—she had some other girl, some fantasy girl, in mind.  Not me.

As a young woman, my mother was a professional dancer.  Later pictures of her show her a tall, handsome woman in clothes of her era, the 1940s.  I have discovered that vintage clothes from the ‘40s fit my body perfectly, and so I have begun to buy those in lieu of new clothes.  I like the idea of wearing clothes that someone else has worn.  And wearing these clothes makes me feel tied to the past in a very comforting way, not just to my mother, but to those folks during WW II who lived more frugal lives than we do, who sacrificed so much for us, and who lived with a kind of honor and a kind of trusting innocence that is hard to come by these days.

What do you want to tell the world about yourself?  As a woman, I want to be powerful and at the same time feminine and vulnerable.  I want to be fully sexual, ripely a woman, and yet fully ministerial, a spiritual leader.  That’s hard to pull off.  Sometimes I don’t know what to wear.

What does your costume say about you?  Do you want to call attention to yourself, or fade into the woodwork?  Do you choose expensive, though casual, clothes that say, “I’m cool and I’ve got money”?  Do your clothes say, “I’m playful”?  Or do they say, “Beauty is important to me”?  Or “I’m on the make”?  Or “I’m undeserving”?

I think it’s best that we choose clothing that we feel good in, clothing that feels natural and right, clothing that makes us feel powerful—not in the sense of “power over,” but clothing that helps us come into our power.  We are asked for one thing during our time on this earth—to be truly present, in our authenticity, and to give our gifts.  That’s what it’s about.  With our clothing, as in every other way, we want to be able to say, “This is who I am.  And I like who I am.  And I’m ready for my self, my real self, to be articulated through my posture, my speech, and my clothing, I’m ready for my self to shine through, and to be available for joy and work and love.  I’m ready to be here just as I am.”  So be it.  Amen.

PRAYER

Spirit of Life, we confess that so often we hide who we are, because we think who we really are is not enough, somehow.  We pray today for the courage to be authentic, to put forth to the world the person who we are, and the person we want to be.  And we pray that we may be a community of people who are accepting of difference and variety of every kind, knowing that integrity has many different forms and colors.  Amen.

BENEDICTION

I send you out from this place admonishing you to be ever more truly who you are.  Go in love and go in peace.