QuakerQuaker

Primitive Christianity Revived, Again

The Discipline of Covering

Karen - I am right there with you being comforted by my plainness. I have been wearing my head covering since January of this year. It has been an emotional roller coaster and very challenging to me! I feel so led to wear it that I don't feel I have any choice about it - in other words I can't stop wearing it now - but occasionally a voice asks me "what do you think you are doing when no one else is doing the same?" It seems to mock me and encourage me to question the leading, especially the fact that "no one else" is doing this! Kind of a "who do you think you are" question. This is on my bad days, obviously. On those days also my snood looks unattractive, and maybe downright offensive to me! But on other days it looks beautiful and makes me feel just right!

I don't know if others have these feelings, but I am trying to see it just as a test of my resolve and my willingness to serve God as he asked me to. I have always been fickle, hereditary I guess, and I think I am being tried so strongly for that reason. But for this very reason I can see why God is requiring this difficult and visible testimony of me and maybe not of others - because if it weren't for that cap I may have let other things, like my daily time with God, slide as well, and pretty soon I would be back into old habits, old ways of thinking and suffering!! It is this cap, no matter how I feel about it, that keeps me on the straight and narrow right now.God knows us so well, eh?

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Permalink Reply by Barbara Smith on 5th mo. 23, 2014 at 6:52pm

Joanie - It does seem that keeping the weight off your scalp would help, like by using a scrunchie, or a hair tie (one that's very strong obviously), up high that would keep the weight of the hair from pulling down with gravity. I always thought that the Amish women losing hair, which so many of them do, was from pulling the hair too tight in their super neat parts and buns. Even quite young women have obviously lost hair on the front. I can imagine the hair tension would cause problems with the blood circulation in the scalp. But it does seem that the higher the bun the less weight pulling down in the back.

I also have noticed that the older women in Ohio Yearly Meeting wear their hair in a twist vertically up the back, not in a bun, and then I presume at one time in history that was covered with the cap. That might also spread the tension and keep it from pulling back and down. Actually it goes up and then folds back down and is all pinned with bobbie pins I think.

Hope it feels better now.

barb

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Permalink Reply by Barbara Smith on 5th mo. 23, 2014 at 9:19pm

Joanie - the Amish around here part their hair in the middle and pull it VERY tight so it is very flat and not a wave is visible. Then the front bit is twisted and makes a band back over the ears. but quite a few have visible hair loss in the front from all that tension. I asked a Mennonite friend what it was from and she admitted that it is from pulling the hair so tight (not a Mennonite habit apparently). I wear a snood, solid fabric, and any size or shape of hair could be put underneath, pretty loosely, and it would look good. It is from Garlands of Grace. Very comfy.

Barb

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