SUNDAY WORST

It is curious how on Sundays, the day of rest, so many people dress in their best clothes. In fact, it is especially curious how church-goers make a point of dressing as smartly as possible. Do they ordinarily dress shabbily during the week? No, I don't think so; though they may dress informally in the evenings and on Saturdays, especially if they are staying at home. Why, then, do they wear their best clothes on Sunday? No doubt, being seen in public is one reason, since smart clothes help to create a good impression on others and make people feel pleased to be in one-another's company. But there is, I feel sure, a deeper reason, which has to do with stressing the apparent rather than the essential.

A Christian, being a dualist, isn't just a man of essence, or spiritual striving; he is also a man of appearance, or sartorial smartness. It would be unthinkable for him to attend church on Sundays dressed in shabby old clothes, like a tramp. He doesn't cultivate essence to a point where appearance becomes a matter of indifference, if not contempt, to him. Appearance is important, because it corresponds to the sensual, active side of Christian dualism. In church, he may cultivate the spiritual or passive side of that dualistic integrity, but not with a shabby appearance!

It would therefore be strange if, on Sundays, people went to church looking like tramps. And yet, in another sense, it would be spiritually significant if they were to do so, since reflecting an indifference to appearances in deference to essential priorities. How refreshing it would be if, for just one day a week, people demonstrated their contempt for appearances in allegiance to essence! If, instead of going to church in their 'Sunday best', they all dressed in their 'Sunday worst' and purposely avoided taking offence at one-another's shabby appearances, as they concentrated their attention, if only for an hour, on the cultivation of spirit!

Ah, so refreshing a change! And yet such an attitude would more correspond to a transcendentally post-dualistic integrity than to a Christian dualistic one, for which not a church but a meditation centre would be the most logical choice of venue. Christians, surely, have never adopted such a policy, and neither are they ever likely to! Sunday for them will continue to be a day when sartorial smartness is emphasized as on no other day, when appearance is honoured in deference to both the Father and the apparent side of Christ.

Of Irish race, I have often looked less than smart in the street and received the disapproving looks of those for whom an odd button or stain or tear or crease or some other sartorial blemish is a kind of social sin. My contempt for appearances in loyalty to a spiritual bias is not appreciated by those who are insufficiently spiritual to be similarly contemptuous of it themselves, which includes most women and not a few effeminate men. They do not possess a superior criterion with which to evaluate appearances, and are obliged, in consequence, to regard one's sartorial predilection as a social defect.... When one has but a rudimentary concept of essence, it stands to reason that appearances will be taken for reality and deemed of greater importance. I, however, regard appearances in a different light, and so bear my shabbiness with pride. It is a mark of spiritual earnestness, which is never as appropriate as on Sunday.