Read I Corinthians 11 if you are not familiar with what the Bible “says” about women covering their heads.
Our church recently had a “week of prayer” and on one night they had child care to make it easier for the parents to come out and pray. We took advantage of this and came out as a family. I was in the prayer room a little early while my wife was downstairs getting our children settled away. When she came upstairs to the prayer room, I noticed she didn’t have her covering on. For those who don’t cover all day, it’s an easy mistake to make. So I quietly got up to let her know she had forgotten. She placed a hand on her head to confirm and said “oops”. We’re prepared for situations like this, and store a couple extra coverings in the glove box of our minivan, so she headed out to grab one. A few minutes later she came back to let me know, the back-up coverings were gone. I figured they were as the previous week we had forgotten as well. So on Sunday we used the back-up coverings in the glove box and forgot to replace them. So here we are, at church, about to spend some focused time to prayer and my wife doesn’t have her covering. What should we do? I’ve thought about this situation before, but this is the first time it wasn’t just hypothetical. There are two options 1) My wife sits in the foyer and doesn’t join us for prayer or 2) she comes in and joins us uncovered.
….
Now once my wife came in, the first thing I did was intercede on her behalf. I confessed my failure to God to prepare my family for this prayer meeting. I apologized and took responsibility for not having the back-up coverings in place and I asked God to forgive us for not praying in the way he prescribed. I also asked Him to help my wife to not be self-conscious and to enjoy her time of prayer with Him.
The major takeaway for me in this situation, was about being prepared. If you cover all the time, this is not a problem for you. That’s one of the benefits of that practice. But for those of us like my family, who covers only in certain situations, being prepared is vital.
Here are a few tips:
- Back-up coverings: Keep extra coverings wherever you’ll have easy access to them if you forget. Some suggestions including your vehicle glove box, your purse, or leave one at a place you frequent (school, work, church).
- Wear a neck scarf: Another option is to introduce scarves (like an Infinity Scarf) into your wardrobe. That way you can slip it over your head as your covering, or as a backup if you forgot your regular covering.
- Reminders/notifications: One of the best ways to not forget is to add it to your task list, schedule, or to set a mobile reminder. For example you could add it to your list of things to lay out on Saturday night in preparation for the morning or you could set a reminder on your phone to alert you just before you leave for church to ensure you have it.
— Jeremy Gardiner, The Head Covering Movement, My Wife Didn’t Wear a Head Covering to Our Church Prayer Meeting, February 17, 2017
WHAT THE HOLY FUCK???!!! shit, I had to deal with this crap as a RC . Dayum, forgot the veil? – find some kleenex and a bobbie pin and you are good to go. He “confessed his failure to God”?! What an Ahole!!!!!!!!!
My reaction is due to the fact that I have ALWAYS had to be a bitch to get my job done in a male domonated field. Sigh – I am 60 yrs old and it still bugs the living shit out of me.
Agree with you entirely. I cant really put into words exactly why this irks me so much. Maybe its the sheer stupidity of the whole affair.
Oh, yeah. I am 55 and went to Catholic grade school. Inremember when girls would forget their veils for our weekly Mass, and the nuns would fold up tissues or paper towels and bobby-pin them on the girls’ heads. Absolutely ridiculous!
Oh, yeah. I am 55 and went to Catholic grade school. I remember when girls would forget their veils for our weekly Mass, and the nuns would fold up tissues or paper towels and bobby-pin them on the girls’ heads. Absolutely ridiculous!
Jeremy Gardiner, get some good help for your obsessions. If you want to take the biblical tales literally, then you’d best go whole hog coo-coo and start a ministry up the road from Steven Anderson. He thinks he’s one of the only lucky guys too, seeing all that simple truth in the verses that everybody else just misses.
If there was a God (and I cannot see that there is) then why would it waste time on head-coverings and hair length, on things that very obviously make no human sense. How shallow can we make ourselves, Jeremy? You sound like a man who has indulged in far too much booze and is now weeping on the bar about himself. Get out there and do something useful for your neighbor or something. Be humanly useful and not waste your time on old ideas that were mediocre ploys at best even in their own day… Sheesh, the level of gah-gah just makes me shake my head and remember that I was this far gone myself not too many years ago. Oh Jeremy, rule out a serious case of constipation first and then seek some kind of silent retreat where you have to keep your mouth shut. See how you like that…. even if it does you no good, Jeremy, it will bring me great relief for that weekend or week that you are silent. Thank-you in advance.
Well, Jeremy, I have to wonder how serious you two are about this if you ‘forgot’ two weeks in a row. Something subconscious going on there, it would seem.
I dont know, this still bugs me. Maybe its the totally creepy fake smile in that picture. It just doesnt look natural and my imagining of how ridiculous this whole situation looks like to the culture at large, it just seems silly and distracting. pass the wine please
Extreme religious obsession really isn’t ‘silly’ at all unless you characterize obsession, compulsive obsession with ‘silly’. I know that it looks like outer space in ways but this kind of illness is really quite common/frequent among fervent believers and ain’t no joke. People with a tendency to extremes can be ‘set-off’ by cultish religious obsession. Steven Anderson’s whole ministry is founded on obsessional extremes, whart he calls the word of God. Steven sees the truth and knows that he has been given an impossible task to accomplish. He knows that God hates homosexuals and would throw them out of the church just as Steven promises to do in faithful obedience to the Father. When one observes the ranting pastor foaming at the mouth and jumping on to his pulpit, one can easily think, perhaps, “Oh, that is so silly,” but I never think that, Trenton. I shudder deep inside and know exactly how serious Steven is and how he would gladly physically harm others if the voice of God told him to do so. In fact, that is what he is already doing with every sermon, harming others and himself in the bargain. And this he believes is service to the Almighty. Scary, deeply sick, hateful, harmful: Yes, all of these things and more but not silly. That’s what we called Donald Trump when he first appeared on the scene and said he wanted to be president. Now Mr. Silly has his finger on the nuclear trigger and lives in the White House.
Jeremy is obsessed with obeying the rules and he knows what he reads in the black book. He chooses (for his own obsessional reasons) what to cherry-pick and focus on, and bingo, it is all about women covering their heads! We are talking seriously damaged, Trenton, don’t you think?
You know what sounds silly to me? God, a God who takes time to tell women how to dress etc. That is about as silly as it gets. How can Jeremy take that fool seriously? (Oh wait, it’s a murderous, psychopatic monster, that God…. not silly either.)
I will agree with you about the things you mentioned not being silly. However this episode with the head covering and the beliefs behind it are silly but back to that in a minute. Andersen is just nuts and his obsessive compulsive nature to constantly harp on the lgbt comunity makes me think that there might be some bone(r)s in his closet. That being said I really dont care that much about Andersen, I have much thicker skin than he does.
Back to Gardiner though, the smile in his picture is fake and it bugs the crap out of me(most fake smiles in advertising do too btw). I will defend my comment about this being silly because it is silly. However the long term consequences from his silly beliefs and these silly episodes are not silly, they are serious. The fact that he interceded on behalf of his wife makes me think that they might be complimentarian which in many ways can cause women to be treated as second class citizens in their own home with no way to voice their disagreement or get out. The dynamics caused by this belief can lead to abuse which is extremely serious.ink you might have
Ignore the last sentence in that comment some bad editing and ran out of time?