Clothing

3. Redeeming Fashion

83 3 redeeming fashion As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Colossians 3:12 How do we foster the good stress and overcome the bad stress in our day-to-day clothing? How can we transform sinful patterns of dress into redemptive ones? Perhaps the most important question, what’s the incentive to do so? If this or that clothing practice mitigates our anxieties about the frailties of life, why change anything? What I have attempted to demonstrate so far is that the rigorous adornment regimens that we participate in every day satisfy our need for control and desire for perfection only temporarily. Before long, our myth of control shatters, and we are back to the dressing room, trying to feel good about ourselves in the midst of all the anxieties that accompany the human condition. The incentive then is to find a new frame for our anxiety. We need to find ways not merely to look better, but even more than that, to live better. We need to redeem fashion. 84 • clothing Spiritual Resources for Embracing Vulnerability Finding a new frame cannot happen unless we first acknowledge the problem, the figurative hand-me-downs that drag us and others down, the dress practices that limit human freedom and creativity and prevent Christian community and solidarity with others. We have already begun this by narrating the ways in which our clothing leads to positive and negative stress, as well as to individual and social sin. Now we can begin to imagine ways to transform the negative and destructive dress patterns into opportunities for grace—invitations to create more life-giving relationships with God and others. The Christian tradition provides resources for embracing our humanity with grace rather than with resentment. As we push on toward constructing a spirituality of dress, it will help us if we not only look at the ways in which vulnerability is imagined in the first chapters of Genesis, but also widen our understanding of vulnerability . Being finite and limited—even needy—is not just something we have to tolerate as Christians; on the contrary , embracing it is part of our call to live in a way that honors Jesus’ ministry, death, and resurrection. In moving from tolerance to embrace, we find resources in the tradition that encourage vulnerability as a way of being hospitable to and even in solidarity with others. Consider a few examples from the Old and New Testaments: God called the people of Israel to be thoughtful of how they •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• Before long, our myth of control shatters, and we are back to the dressing room, trying to feel good about ourselves in the midst of all the anxieties that accompany the human condition. •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• redeeming fashion • 85 act with strangers, since they themselves were estranged in exile. Mary, the mother of Jesus, gave her consent to enter into a precarious relationship with God as an unwed mother, and Joseph made a commitment to stand by her. The gospels often portray Jesus’ ministry to the poor and outcast. Finally, throughout the Christian tradition and particularly in the work of Athanasius, we have theological claims that God became human as a way of offering relationship to humanity. All these elements in the tradition enliven Christians to imagine human frailty as a way to connect with others in open and genuine ways. Empathy and the Exile Experience. Throughout scripture , there are frequent mandates from God to take care of the vulnerable, including widows, orphans, and strangers . In Exodus, the Israelites, who have faced suffering and abandonment at the hands of the pharaoh and others, are summoned by God to always remember those in similar precarious situations—to care for and protect them in this way: “You shall not oppress a resident alien; you know the heart of an alien, for you were all aliens in the land of Egypt” (Exodus 23:9). Likewise, in Leviticus, God commands the people, “When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself; for you were all aliens in the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God” (Leviticus 19:33-34). These commands reveal a side of the divine that wants creation to acknowledge human frailty and neediness. Human...