To have hair or not to have hair

If there is one thing everyone woman should do just once in their life its shave off your hair. Day 3 and I'm already thinking that it is getting just that little bit too long! I find I have much darker hair stubble than I remember (all those years of hair dye). I am also told that I look like a Buddhist nun. Did I say it feels just so good? I can't stop touching my head.

Aside from the very funky experience of heightened sensation, I am noticing that people treat me differently. Once people know I’ve shaved off my hair in support of my friend going through Chemotherapy they open up in new ways. I don’t think I have ever had so many people share either their own battles with cancer or those of families and friends. My hair loss is also confronting for some people. Some people turn away quickly least I think they are staring. One woman went into total shock when she saw me and can hardly look at me. It turns out that a dear friend of hers had just lost her hair. Seeing me in the flesh (her friend lives overseas) has bought home what her friend is going through with out her.

Older men (once they learn that I haven’t left my husband and embraced lesbianism) seem caught between wanting to come up and touch my head all the time and to avoid looking me in the eye. After a challenge by the Bishop (a cancer survivor himself) we who have shaved our heads, have begun gathering sponsorship and donations for the cancer society for our de-hairing, which is kind of cool. The Bishop now seems interested in giving people markers to draw on my head. Hmm a new kind of evangelism perhaps.
“I became a Christian ask me how!”

Yesterday I had coffee with my friend who has lost her hair, it was the first time we have seen each other bald. She has such a lovely head! I avoid wearing a hat unless it’s cold, so yesterday after sitting in discomfort in a very hot wig my friend looked at me and took it off. We sat there hairless together drinking coffee. She is a remarkably courageous woman.

Church this Sunday will be interesting (the downside of being in a small congregation where everyone knows everyone), it would be easier to sneak off and lose myself in some large congregation somewhere…but we shall see.

The journey continues… I have begun wondering about tattoos or better still scarification now that would be interesting.

And yes I have to confess the photos are not me sigh....

Today I Shave My Hair Off ...Lord have mercy

Okay so this is it! In an hour I am shaving off my hair.
Tis a far far more stupid thing I have do than I have ever done before...

No not stupid, exposing, and Out there yes! Stupid no.
I realise at this moment that I love my hair. It has been with me for some considerable years and been an expression of much that has happened in my life.

Weird things go through my head like "What will my mother say" and I had this morning a moment where I remembered as a child being fixated with WW2 stories especially those of Holocaust victims. And of one photo which I have been trying to find but can't of a few young french women who had been punished as collaborators and were shaved. The WW2 photo shows the women clutching their babies born of German solders, and being chased through the streets.

They say that people get hair cuts or tattoos, piercings etc usually when something major has happened in their life. In my teenage street youth working years I had Mohawk (I cant believe I did that ) and then long blueblack Gothic tresses. After I go married I cut my hair throwing away long curls for short mature and modern. When I was accepted as an ordinand (not that long ago) a friend of mine took me celebrating by... you got it once more cutting off my curls. And today it all comes off, shaved.
Will my husband ever snuggle me again I wonder?
The difference today I guess is that it is not my major life crisis that is compelling me to do this but that of my dear friend.

I can do this. (shut up Delila its just hair)

From One Extreme to Another

On Sunday I went with my husband to church. This may not seem much of a deal for most christian couples, but when you worship in Churches as diverse and different as my husband and I, it can be. I worship at an Anglo-Catholic Anglican Church with fairly liberal tendencies. My husband worships at the local Vineyard church.

Both of us search for ways to embrace our differences and indeed to worship together occasionally. For me the experience of visiting my husbands church can be a little over exposing to the say the least. My church has an average gathering of about 40 people on a Sunday, it is a huge beautiful Gothic structure where there is only one person younger than I in congregation. We embrace silence, contemplation, liturgy, prayer and sacrament.

I imagine if someone were to take my photo when I visit the vineyard church I would look a little like the BBC journalist released last week after months of isolation and thrust in front of the worlds media. For a start even though I am told a lot of people are away sick, there are people everywhere. Children dart in and out babies crawl in the isles and everywhere you look there are pregnant women. (I am not sure whats in the water there!)

Such noise and vibrancy can be bruising for me. Worship for me is usually a gentle deeply sacred communal experience, where as this is a full on shout to the Lord occurrence.

Certain questions are raised for me when visiting the Vineyard church.
Is there a critical mass?
How do you make a connection with people when there are hundreds of them?
Where does community building occur?
How are you able to recognise people are in need, or indeed present when there are so many people?
Where is the stopping to be Still in the presence of God? and indeed is waiting on God in silent expectation important?
Is there Liturgy here? Is it important?and does it get in the way.
And what would happen if I were to turn those questions around and ask them of my community?
Oh yes and did I ask what was in the water?

Its all a bit daunting for this child. Yet there are times like this when daunting is good. It is important for me and I think for us all to get out of our comfort zones, to experience the spirit moving in a new way.

It also helps us to go back to our own churches and investigate how we view and indeed are viewed as Church.

There is much I admire in our local vineyard church. There commitment to the poor in the community is awesome and I would have to say that the men's group has provided a richness and support that has been a gift to my husband. I know that much of the networking and community building that does occur happens through home and study groups. And when the spirit moves, man get in the way!

And there is much that I admire in my community. The intimacy, the mission work for people in the community, the liturgy, the fellowship. Sure not on a scale like Grace Vineyard but every bit as important.

To move between these worlds I can not help but be forced to compare the two but to put one over the other is to ignore the spirits way of touching people in a magnitude of different ways.

And as for our political differences...well that's another post entirely.

So what questions am I left with when I enter my own Church? I'll tell you next Sunday.

In the mean time a question for you?
When was the last time you experienced Church outside of your comfort zone? Enquiring minds want to know.