Family Commitments of a scale and magnitude that nobody would deny to be more important than churchsearching... but, as such, totally unblogaboutable. I'm sure there's a good few posts in there about doing Family Commitments as an expression of faith, about how/why the church constructs Family and/or constructs itself as a family... but I probably won't get there today.
The train home yesterday evening was cramped, stuffy and very slow. We shared a carriage with a family of nine children, all aged below five (cousins? foster children?) and all piled on top of one another and all yelling and throwing jelly babies at one another in a mixture of French and a language I couldn't identify. About an hour into the journey, their dad (or uncle? big brother? carer?) took out his iPod and some speakers and plugged them in, broadcasting "We want to see Jesus lifted high" at full volume to the entire train. And slowly, five of the nine children climbed into the aisles and began to dance. I wasn't sure whether they were dancing because they wanted to or had been trained to, but they were giggling and seemed to be enjoying themselves. The rest of the carriage watched, amazed...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
8 comments:
Jesus as the ultimate babysitter when you can't be bothered to parent your own children? And without any regard for those around you?
No wonder the others watched in amazement.
That sounds wonderful to watch. Spontanious dancing always makes me smile. Hannah X
Yes, altogether intriguing! Beloved (being both an incredibly good dancer and besotted with children) was itching to join in, but was worried (being male) that he might be seen as a bit dodgy...
We spent yesterday doing family stuff too and watching six grand-nieces and grand-nephews (four well disciplined, two not, different parents).
I love intriguing public episodes like the one you describe.
I think your Dad is quite brilliant!
He was their dad, not mine.
But my dad did like gospel music. He'd have enjoyed the YouTube clip I linked to!
Am I the only one who finds this really wrong?
I keep thinking that we have absolutely no idea what frame of mind the other people on that train were in.
If my love, recently battered by the church and returning from a difficult weekend babysitting distruptive small grandchildren while their parents contemplate a messy divorce, had had to watch a group of children run riot and had then been treated to intrusive happy Jesus music, I think she'd have been ready to throw herself out of the window. And I mean that quite literally.
There are some things that sound cute in print and that we can occasionally find entertaining. But unless we're really sure that we're not imposing ourselves on people who have no inner resources to cope with it, it's just plain bad manners and a total inability to empathise.
I couldn't work it out.
Had the parents trained their children to dance on cue? (They weren't speaking English... did they even understand the words of the song?)
Or were the kids just genuinely having fun? (My guess would be they were Rwandan Tutsi, a culture in which music and dance are non-step pursuits.)
Did the dad knew that in Britain, you ask before you inflict music on people? (From what I remember from central Africa, it's fine to turn your music up full blast anywhere... though that was before mp3 players were invented.)
Or was it meant as a form of evangelism?
And where were they going? And why were they travelling with more children than could biologically have been theirs?
Still, I'm intrigued...
Post a Comment