Associate Minister's Musings
The Associate Minister’s Musings
How time passes! My students have now arrived and sort of settled in, so I am learning about this year’s acceptable fashion clothing for students. It appears to be anything, especially things that really aren’t sensible in the cooling weather. Shorts appear to be fine, or if you must wear trousers, they have to be jeans and really need to have rips in the knees and be far too long, thus ripped at the bottom. For first years the excellent University of Teesside sweat shirts and hoodies are recommended as they are warm and clean when you buy them. Others are wearing things that they have washed and all have come out a nice shade of grey or maybe pink, depending on the colour of the towel they put in the wash with their other clothes.
I guess I’ve seen so many groups of students, I watch with mild amusement as the fashions change, not realising that I had been caught up in this myself. You see, I was looking through some old albums of family photographs when I came across one of me wearing some very strange things. It was a long sleeved dress, worn with best white shoes and knee length white socks. What was very strange was that the hem of the dress was about six inches above my knees, a length that I never wear (except maybe on the beach in sunnier climes!). Maybe I should give you a clue as to what I was doing in this very short dress, well it was a white dress and I was clutching a large black book. Have you guessed yet? Yes, this was my confirmation day and I was in my beautiful (if rather short) confirmation outfit. I have to admit that I was rather shocked at my own appearance, but looking at the family photos taken on that day, I noticed that everyone (except the Bishop) was in the shorter length which must have been the fashion of the time.
I’m not sure if I was ever really fashionable, but I have to admit that the photos did make me laugh and think how reasonable is the fashion sense of my students. Even though we cannot stop ourselves making a judgement based on what we see in front of us, maybe we should try to get to know what is inside each individual rather than deciding based on what a person looks like. We know that God examines the heart of each of us and understands our struggles and joys, and maybe we designed clothes to make us laugh at ourselves, and that isn’t a bad thing!
Julie Watson