A White Sport Coat and a Pink Carnation

After church today I was asked if I was “devastatingly disappointed” at having had to postpone our Holy island pilgrimage. If I were not concerned about appearing half-way sane, I would have answered by bursting into song, and the song would be A WHITE SPORTCOAT AND A PINK CARNATION, a top-40 number from the 1950’s that described my emotional state so often as a teenager that one day at age 15 I hung my white sport coat in the closet and never wore it again. I had decided it was safer to dress down and keep my expectations low.

Such severity in repressing one’s emotions is not good mental health practice, and much of my adult life has been given over to recovering from denial and guilt left over from that part of my life. Indeed, if “Impersonating a Stoic” could be considered an addiction, I would present as evidence of my recovery the very public strutting and preening I have done with regard to our Holy Island Pilgrimage. For the past year I feel as if I have worn my White Sport Coat and Pink Carnation in the pulpit, in conversation, and particularly in this blog.

So yes, I am disappointed, but also reconciled. Whatever I hope to eventually discover on Holy island is present every day in the “for better, for worse” relationship I share with Nancy, and her health and happiness are what I would have been praying for in that sacred place had not the necessity of her having gall bladder surgery kept us from going there last week.

I feel compassion for the boy that I was, and still am to some degree, hiding my feelings of crestfallen vulnerability in the closet along with his white sport coat. Next time I am in the Thrift Store I will check the racks in the Men’s Department to see if any relics from the 1950’s might be there, and if you see me wearing a black clerical shirt under a white sport coat, you will know that I am making a theological “statement” of sorts, one that, mercifully, absolves me of the need to burst into song.