Dignity and Veltheimia

Dignity is defined as the state or quality of being worthy of honour or respect. Other definitions speak to the having a composed or serious manner.   A common association  with dignity is mastery over our bodily functions and the presence/lack of clothing.  We seem to consider naked to be undignified.  This is so much the case that it is illegal in most places. I went in search of some context for this and I found this article at the National Catholic Register HERE: Clothe the Naked:  Acknowledging the Need for Human Dignity.  "Nake is an archaic English word meaning “to strip clothes off.” To be “naked,” therefore, is to be in a state of “having had your clothes stripped off.” Why does this bit of pedantry matter? Because it speaks volumes about what our ancestors regarded as the natural state of man. While a couple of groups attempted it in warmer Mediterranean climates in early Christendom, it is not until after the Reformation, the rise of the Enlightenment and, especially, the rise of technologies that allowed Northern Europeans to maintain a bit of comfort in chill weather that Northerners really started to see the rise of so-called “Adamite” movements (later frankly renamed nudist movements), which propose that our natural state is to walk around buck naked on the theory that clothes are an unnatural encumbrance on our glorious childlike freedom. For our ancestors of not many generations back, such a proposal was not just silly in a practical sense; it was also just about 180 degrees backwards from normality. Fallen man was, so to speak, born clothed. Something unnatural had to be done — he had to undergo some process of naking — for him to end up naked. It was seen, not as a return to simplicity and beauty, but as a shameful state. Pity — or scorn — was heaped on those found to be naked, not breezy “Flower Child” approval". It is because clothes have so very much to do with our human dignity that Jesus urges us to clothe the naked. But this confronts us with a problem. As with every counsel of Jesus, the command to clothe the naked has both a practical and spiritual dimension, because grace builds on nature. And there’s the rub: Our encounters with the naked beggar are fairly rare. The people I meet in the soup kitchen line at Blessed Sacrament Parish in Seattle are not naked. Nor are the homeless folk you meet in your town. This is the beautiful Veltheimia flower - this picture is at Butchart Gardens in the restaurant.