Why Gloves?

Thanks to this spree of weeding, I have acquired quite a lot of dirt under my fingernails. I looked at them, frowned, and went for the clippers. They will have to be clipped short and stripped of glosses, unless I want the garden dirt to do it for me.

"Look at this, Mama. I still can't get all the dirt out." Mom smiled. "Honey, you have to wear gloves. That's how a lady gardens."

That's how a lady gardens.

Odd that such an unconnected phrase can throw you back upon an old problem. For two years or so, now, I have been struggling to understand what it is to be a lady, and how I can become one. At every turn I run up against this sticky place: a lady, it seems, must be someone who wears gloves with people, just as a lady gardener wears gloves with dirt. But for me, half the pleasure of gardening is that same dirt--I love the feel and smell of it; I love the richness of it, and I love to touch it. Gloves are a small price to pay for clean hands, perhaps--but can I give up the immediacy of touch?

Just so with people. Handling them with kid gloves is a small price to pay for harmony (at least, external harmony) and peace, but... but "politeness" has always seemed to me drearily insincere. Perhaps that's why I don't enjoy the plays of Oscar Wilde. Though he mocks the forms of his day, the spirit of them is still in every word. "Oh no, Miss ____, I think you are charming." And then he leans out to the audience and makes a snide comment about how her nose is off-center, or some such. That is how Wilde is.

Something tells me that a real lady is never insincere, and doesn't wear gloves with people in that way. But, if this is true, it is rare. I, who surely have been blessed with some of the richest acquaintance in the world (through no merit of my own, as the Lord knows) am aware of a few--I have an aunt, a cousin, and a coworker, who all exhibit what I shall call "a sweet and quiet spirit." They care for others endlessly, and always seem to mean it. However, in the world generally, "courtesy" leaves me cold.

Most whom I see blessed with what one might call "graciousness" or "the gift of pleasing" have a corresponding (and often crippling) sin of fearing man (you know, wanting man's good opinion more than one wants God's). And this has always repelled me. Self-righteousness on my part? Yes, quite. My besetting sins are far worse--arrogance, selfish disdain, resentment (and it used to be implacable resentment), the bearing of grudges... but still, insincerity of all kinds has a strong negative impact on me. If we all tend towards some particular evil, then perhaps we all also tend away from some particular evil: my "tend-towards" are many, but my only great "tend-away" is duplicity. This is not to say that I am incapable of it--I wish I were. It is only to say that I hate it, passionately, in myself and in others.

So, then, my Lord, how to be a lady without gloves? What does Scripture say?

I'll let you know. :-)