Bind

We were sitting around the kitchen table the other morning (the kitchen table is like our HQ, it's the restaurant, the office, the workshop, artist's studio, it's anything we want it to be...) and Miriam was doing the most amazingly neat sewing, and as far as I know it was the first time in her life she'd picked up a needle, and she stitched this white thread along three sides of a blue oblong of felt and said it was a door to a house.

And Theo got messing with whatever he could find in the curious cube that is mummy's sewing box and next thing I know he's wrapped his arms up in ribbons, and the first thing it makes me think of is the tefillin that some Jews bind around their arm and forehead during prayer. I guess the whole tefillin thing comes down to interpretation - did Moses' instructions in the Torah literally mean strap the words to your body (the Pharisees thought so) or figuratively (like the Saducees did.)

Love God, your God, with your whole heart: love him with all that's in you, love him with all you've got! Write these commandments that I've given you today on your hearts. Get them inside of you and then get them inside your children. Talk about them wherever you are, sitting at home or walking in the street; talk about them from the time you get up in the morning to when you fall into bed at night. Tie them on your hands and foreheads as a reminder; inscribe them on the doorposts of your homes and on your city gates. [Deuteronomy 6:5-9, Message translation]

I'm going for figuratively, myself, but the point is, how seriously are we about getting God's word into our lives, and into the lives of our children, from morning to night?

I'm blessed by school holidays, and all the extra chances to be with Miriam and Theo. Bright sunshine in their bedroom and their body clocks mean that, during holidays, they still come in at 7.02 am. Theo checks with Miriam that it's officially "morning time" and then in they romp. Theo's right eye is almost always closed in a permanent wink. Over the years I seem to have subconsciously developed ways of protecting vital parts of my body even though my central nervous system is on some kind of shut down at that point, and my left eye seems to be getting gammier and more rheumy (out of symmetrical sympathy with Theo's, maybe? Probably more to do with screen glare.) Sometimes my head gets trodden on when they squirm and swap places. And there's always the chance that we all need the loo simultaneously (not so bad in the summer, but noone fancies the coalshed one in Winter, those tiles are too chilly.)

But every now and then, something one of the children will say, maybe something they dreamt about, or anything really, just seems to prompt a God story. Like yesterday morning, when Miriam was saying that Jesus was in everyone's heart, and we gently talked about how not everyone knows Jesus, even though he wants to know everyone (and we're praying that they invite him in) because some people have said no to him. And the story of the Prodigal Son just tumbled out, improvised and with vague echoes of acting it out at a youth club in Mostar, Bosnia a few years back, only now it was the Bleary Eyed Theatre Company retelling. And it flowed, and it helped us later on talk about saying sorry and being forgiven, and it was about passing something on, and it must have been the Holy Spirit helping to bring it alive, because my body was still mostly asleep.

And for me, that's a bit of tefillin right there.

ps. it was only in writing this that I noticed that Miriam had been stitching a door, and how that was linked into the Bible verses without my even realising it at the time.