It looked like a weekly routine. Household ritual. Part of the family's liturgy.
Dad looked like he was just home from work -- still wearing overalls (with a kind of civic-employee or company-issue look to them) and boots, seeming not yet to have cleaned up after a day's labour. Carrying a bag of trash down the driveway for pick-up at the side of the highway.
Behind him by just a step or two his daughter, maybe 6 or 7 years old, followed carrying a blue box in front of her -- arms stretched forward by its size and weight, hands holding it as tightly as she could, back arched just a little to counter the weight of the box in front of her.
Beside him walked his son, maybe 2 or 3, carrying nothing yet but all the same resolutely walking beside his dad in this weekly procession.
The little girl's arms and hands surely know by now and by memory the weight and size of the blue box. Just how to hold it. How to manage its weight. How not to drop it on the way.
And the little boy knows by memory the pace of the weekly walk, the feel of the ground under his feet and the wind on his face, the number of steps required without even being able to tell you the number, what it feels like to be doing this with his dad and his big sister.
The memory is in the muscles, I was told long ago by someone who studied bioenergetics.
Even without putting in the 10,000 hours (almost 250 years of weekly 5-minute trash processions!) to become an expert, after only a short childhood practice of this how deeply will the body, mind and heart of this boy and girl be shaped around the experience and expectation of working together as a family in household chores? And in who knows what else?
Spiritual practice as much as any Bible study, worship, or prayerful meditation?
No comments:
Post a Comment