Hello, Paula!

I attempted to reply to your message about attending the Dunkard Brethren church this morning, but I don't think my message got transmitted.

I am glad that you have found fellowship and spiritual nurture among the DBs.  I have had this same experience among Old German Baptists.  When "the chips were down" over and over again in my life, the German Baptists have been understanding and supportive of me.

May the Lord bless and keep you close to Him!

Bill Rushby

Dear Friend Paula!

Thank you for accepting my invitation! I look forward to conversing with thee in the future. I have my husband Timothy to thank for helping me join this site and could never have done it without him!!!! I am very dumb when it comes to technology !So he has been tutoring me on the computer. I am very happy to have you for my friend! :):) 

Blessings to thee today!

Hilda

Thank thee for accepting our invitation. Hope and trust that thee hast a blessed night and morning. Peace be with thee and thy household.

Timothy

Thank you so much for your friendship, Paula.  I love the way you dress 'plain'  with such character and grace. 

Thank you for the welcome!! It's such a blessing to be surrounded by like minded people.

Leslie Rodgers wrote: "No matter what we wear it's not what we "are", it's how we are choosing to present ourselves."

The sociologist Erving Goffman coined the term "presentation of self", and argued that people engage in "impression management", based on the notion that human interaction can be understand by analogy with the stage play. He wrote a book entitled *The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life*, a fascinating piece of work.

There is one in town that I am starting to attend but it is Liberal and I would prefer Conservative.

Paula, I don't know what you were like as a kid or a teen, but if my dear departed Mama had been told I would grow up to be a woman who liked tidiness and order she never would have believed it. For me it was definitely a long time coming.
When I can make things around me orderly it is calming, though, and I love calm.

In telling me the different types of 'sort of plain' dress in your meeting you have reminded me that even the Quakers here are after all living in Bloomington, a peculiarly liberal college town.
No one on the street here has ever seemed to be bothered by what I wear, other than the occasional person stopping me to say "I like your dress, where did you get it?"
Our town had the usual skinny girls in leggings and tiny t- shirts here and itty bitty sun dresses. We have young men in low-hanging pants, but we also have a fair collection of business suits, jeans of every imaginable style, women in veils of all types and men in kilts.
Perhaps if I get brave enough to try Meeting for Worship I won't raise too many eyebrows?

My father used to talk to me about the kind of image we project. We are the only creatures on the planet who can choose how we look to each other, and who evaluate each other based on our appearance.
Because of that, all clothing is a form of costume. No matter what we wear it's not what we "are", it's how we are choosing to present ourselves.
I think this gives us a great opportunity.

Opportunity for what? I'm still working on figuring that out.
To change ourselves, become more humble, become less obsessive, less greedy?
To change the world?

I started fads in high school. I was an outsider, not popular and not interested in being popular, but I was watched. If I did something, like sew bells on the knees of my bell-bottoms, within a few days other people would be doing the same. Humans are very imitative creatures.

I think with more people taking up plain dress we can send a subtle message to the world around us, a message that our clothes don't have to be made far, far away, they don't have to be expensive, they don't have to show off our riches> We don't need new clothes weekly, we don't need to have full walk-in closets.
We can live with less, be happy with less, serve the world with less.