MATHETΩN

“We believe in beauty with economy.”

– Pericles

Some people are doing some very good things!

Things like, for example, turning, in only a few months, just a fraction-of-an-acre of abandoned volcanic-ash-poisoned land into a lush orchard capable of providing good income to a family of five:

Permaculture

Or designing how food-stamp-dependent people can eat a generous, nutritious diet, full of delicious foods like homemade peach ice cream, and very high in vegetables and whole grains, for as little as three dollars a day:

Cook for Good

I’m so happy to know such people exist!

The Mathetai, as I have implied before, mostly wear traditional work-clothes. Yet modesty is not their rule so much as expediency. If the Duke of Windsor had bequeathed a Mathetes a wardrobe, he likely would wear most of it.

Clothing is one of two material things the Mathetai allow concern them; as the Envoy has written: “Having food and raiment, let us be therewith content.” Yet that the Envoy has recognized clothing does not mean the Mathetai think much of them. They would wear free rags if these covered and warmed them. But this is not acseticism: again, it is expediency.

The hermits, from the anchorites to the Mennonites, have got small things right with a very great thing wrong. It is because the Mathetai war a great war and work a great work that they have not a second nor a cent for finery. If a Mathetes had leisure and spare wealth, he would spend it as the Epicurean with a Cynic’s mind, prescribed in the Ecclesiastes, would spend it.

The Mathetai have no rules of appearance any more than they have any other rules: Their only law is the “law of liberty” (Paul Envoy) which the Logos writes on each heart.

However, certain principles have their visible effect. Primary of these is the principle that all the Mathetes does is for love. It is love for the Kingdom that causes the Mathetes to form all his acts to expedite the Kingdom. It is love of creation that causes the Mathetes to limit his consumption, for consumption is a type of destruction. It is love for the poor that causes the Mathetes to eschew the appearance of riches.

The Mathetes most often can be seen wearing durable work-clothes of a sort available off-the-rack. His wardrobe may not be monochromatic, but it is of single-minded utility — “changeable suits of apparel” (Paul) are not his. The Mathetes wears his poplin to a funeral. Any exceptions will be simple, of unusual utility, and beautiful and be crafted by the Mathetes or another of the Mathetai — for creation (unlike consumption) pleases the gods.

The Mathetes’s head and facial hair is most commonly cut in a simple “buzz” by clippers he employs himself. The bowlcut is also commonly-seen, again the scissors having been employed by his own hands. In areas where is a Mathetes who was a barber, the Mathetai may be more-respectably coiffed.

The white armband is not universal, for the Mathetai know that “by this shall all know you are my Mathetai — that you love one another” (Iesous). …