Monday, 09 July 2007

doek!

my son ruben is teaching me again...

elaine and I shower in the mornings. Ruben is becoming mommy and daddy's little helper... when he hears the water stop he runs into the bathroom shouting "Doek! Doek!" (that's afrikaans for "towel".) He gets the towel off the rail and hands it to us... Cute!

more interesting, i was lying in bed this morning... elaine finished showering and I realised that ruben wasn't around. Without a second thought I asked: "Elaine, can I get you a towel?"

if you ask my partner about what get's me out of bed in the morning, she'll tell you that there's not much... and yet a small little routine of my son managed to move me from my comfort.

we should give some thought to the tension between Performance and Principle - where "performance" refers to the actual practice of an activity and "Principle" refers to the theory or value or motivation that supports the activity.

for a long time, i've been taught (and was fairly convinced) that no real "outer" change can happen without an initial "inner" change of the heart. fair enough. the theory makes sense. you have to get the Principle in place, in order to motivate the Practice.... you have to have your heart touched in order to reach out your hand in kindness... or do you?

ruben's little "doek" routine - and it's infectiousness - suggests that getting into a rhythm of Practice may be more effective than grasping the Principle behind it... maybe we should try getting into a Routine of Kindness and see how that affects our Theory (Principle) - and our Heart, for that matter...
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2 comments:

Unknown said...

An old friend of mine is an ex Methodist minister. I was telling her a story about how in some churches i've been to, you can't take communion unless you are either a ember of that church or a member of that denomination. The theory behind this is that they wwant to make sure that anyone participating in the ritual understood the theological underpinnings that made the ritual significant.

It seemed logical: I've heard many different religions make similar claims. Understand the theory first so that the action has menaning.

My friend, however, was horrified. "In the Methodist church," she said, "everyone is welcome to take communion, Christians as well as non-Christians. We welcome everyone to sit at the table of God, not just those who know how to eat elegantly. In my house we sit the baby at the table and let him make a mess like babies do; he'll learn in time. It's just like that at God's table--the babies eat with the rest of us."

I was so inspired by this ideology that it completely changed my ideas about rituals. rites, and mundane activities. Meaning works both ways, and sometimes it is better to let the activity come first and let a person develop her own theories and philosophies around it.

13 July 2007 at 18:20
barry said...

Yes!!!

I am a methodist minsiter - seems this "principle" of practice till you "get it" is deeply ingrained in our Methodist tradition...

I apply the same thinking to Baptism.. I often baptise the children of parents who are not practicing members of my church. I'm not overly concerned about the reasons why they ask for their children to be baptised (actually some of the reasons do concern me) - I'd rather let the act of Baptism express the Grace of God in such a way that it invite those parents into an experience of the Grace which they, and all of us, need...

making the ritual "gracious" has become of much more significance to me, than making the ritual "serious" (where "serious" means "correct" and "upright" and "according to the prescribed text..." etc.)

thanks so much for your words, which have helped me to express myself in a helpful (to me) way!

14 July 2007 at 00:43

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