All gussied up

My mom was born and raised in Virginia, and came into her adult life with a number of great phrases brought with her from her own southern family -- things like "Lord willin' an the crick don' rise" and the one that occurs to me when I look at this latest goddess, made of a storm drain I found in Portland last weekend, "All gussied up."

There were other related phrases we picked up over the years, of course -- "all dressed up and no place to go," or "mutton dressed as lamb" (I love that one, and, sadly, still often see it apply), "you can dress her up but you can't take her anywhere" and the old standby, "you can't tell a book by its cover."

They all have to do, I think, with the difference between appearance (which can be doctored to create an illusion) and reality; something we're all prone to confusing. We were discussing this last night over dinner: somehow the subject of bishops and clergy came up, and my older daughter's face began to curl into a bit of a sneer.

"Oh, no; this bishop (I was speaking of Bishop Tharp of East Tennessee, a wonderful man (now deceased) whom I dearly loved) was one of the GOOD ones -- like your godfather," I said, and her face lit up.

"I don't get it," my husband said; "It's not like they choose them blindly -- there are meetings, and interviews, and surely their reputations precede them."

Ah, I said, but the problem is that even knowing what they know, people tend to make these sorts of decisions based on appearances and charisma. I've known several extraordinary clergy who would have made wonderful bishops, who even got into the running, but lost out to folks who were flashier, or taller, or had more hair; were more charismatic speakers, or just looked better in their robes... a drama that plays out in courtrooms and corporations and hospitals and any number of other places as well. Which just goes to show, the church and its people are neither immune to temptation nor extraordinarily subject to it: it's a human institution, and as such face all too human challenges.

So what's the point here, and why am I talking about this? Perhaps because we're in the midst of gussying up our house right now. And I'm not quite sure if the tidying up is a GOOD thing, because we are removing all the distractions and revealing her beautiful bones, or if it's just an attempt to hide the true fact, which is that we're not a particularly tidy family, and don't worry about outward appearances as much as we probably should. Or, at least, SOME of us are not particularly tidy, and others of us have given up trying to police that.

I'll leave you to guess who falls into the latter category... In the meantime, I've got to get back to my gussying activities. Have a wonderful day!