Suspenders, stomachaches, and the articulation of leadings

About a month ago, I started giving away clothing by the bag-load. A few days ago, I cut the collars off of three solid-color, long sleeve shirts. Whenever I find a ride to my local Goodwill, I'm buying suspenders and switching from jeans to black pants.

It feels so rightly-ordered for me to be going plain. But when someone asks me to explain this leading, I have terrible difficulty describing it to them.

I have been able to articulate some of the reasons why I feel led to plain dress. I want to have a constant reminder of the fact that God is the most important thing in my life. I want to explore how my behavior changes (or doesn't change) when I am wearing clothes that are a visible expression of my faith. I want to be more faithfully simple. I want to use the Earth's resources well, open up conversations about faith, Quakerism, and consumer culture, and keep my vanity in check.

Sometimes when people ask me about my clothes, I am able to articulate those things well, and sometimes I am not, but it always feels vaguely incomplete, and I falter in answering the harder questions people pose to me: Why traditional plain dress, instead of jeans and a t-shirt? Shouldn't the awareness of God come from inside, not outside? What specific testimony(ies) of Quakerism are you witnessing to? Why banded collars? Why suspenders?

I feel like the most honest answer I could possibly give is this: It feels right. My old clothes feel inauthentic. When I tried to put on a striped, collared shirt this morning, I got a stomacheache and began to tremble, and when I took it off and put on a plain shirt with the collar removed, it went away.

In essence, people (I myself being one) are asking the question, "Why are you led to plain dress?" when the question that most needs asking is simply, "Are you led to plain dress?"

I really believe I am.

The word articulation has two distinct meanings: effectively communicating ideas through speech, and the state of two parts being joined together in such a way as to allow for motion by each (as in a joint in the body). Perhaps, then, to "articulate" a leading in the truest sense of the word is to become joined together, God and the person being led, the person being led and the person to whom they are describing the leading. God moves within us, prompting us to further movement in faithfulness to whatever leadings we experience. We move in others by faithfully recounting our experience, and hope that it prompts some movement in their own heart and soul. This connection, this articulation, only facilitates movement when it is relaxed, flexible, and strong. So in moving out into the world with a new (for me) witness, perhaps what I most need to remember is how to be a good joint.

I don't necessarily need to be able to describe the Quaker history of plain dress, or the theological implications of the banded collar- though if I find myself speaking to those things, that's fine. What it is most important for me to be able to say, I think, is, "I am plain because I feel that this is what God wants of me right now."

Many times, a leading takes shape as an outward expression of an inward belief or testimony. At other times, however, the truest worth of a leading is in pure faithfulness. If God asks me to stand on my head, I may not be able to explain it to myself or others, but- I can only hope- there I will be, upside-down. If suspenders are what God requires of me right now, my best hope and greatest ambition can only be to be a faithful wearer of suspenders, and rejoice every morning when I shoulder (pun tragically intended) what I am given as mine.

There is no calling greater than faithfulness, even, perhaps especially, when we do not understand why.