I Use A Chair And Nobody Writes To Me

You have read four of these and you are still reading, which is more patience than most people would extend.

Every one has assumed legs. Not cruelly. Not even carelessly, exactly. Just completely, the way a fish assumes water, in phrases like get out of the door and to the end of the street and stand up before anybody offers.

And there is usually, somewhere near the bottom, a clause. If you use a chair, then. A small adjustment, added on, for you.

You know exactly what that clause is. It is a good person remembering, late, that somebody like you might be reading.

And it is worse than not being mentioned, most days, because it makes it unmistakable that the article was written for somebody else and then adapted, and adaptation is a thing that happens to people who were not in the room when it was designed.

So this one is written to you from the first line, and there is no clause in it, and nothing in it needs adjusting.

Here is what this site is actually about, stripped of the legs: a household using their bodies in the same place for ten minutes. That is it. That is the whole thing.

You have a body. You use it more deliberately than most people in this country use theirs. The only thing you have ever needed from an article like this is for it to have been thought about properly, once, at the start.

He did eat continually at the king's table

There is a man in Second Samuel who gets four verses, and the last line of his last verse is one of the most carefully placed sentences in the book.

So Mephibosheth dwelt in Jerusalem: for he did eat continually at the king's table; and was lame on both his feet. (2 Samuel 9:13, King James Version)

So Mephibosheth dwelt in Jerusalem, for he did eat continually at the king's table, and was lame on both his feet.

Read the order of that sentence. The table comes first. The feet come last, as a fact about him, after the position has already been established.

You have a verse where the seat at the table is stated before the condition is mentioned, and 2 Samuel 9:13 has never once made the second one a qualification of the first. He ate continually at the king's table, and the Holy Spirit is the one who seats a man before anybody has assessed him.

You are able to see how easily it could have been written the other way. Mephibosheth was lame on both his feet, but David let him eat at the table. That is how the story usually gets told when people tell it, and it is not how the text tells it.

The text says he lived in Jerusalem, he ate at the table continually, and he was lame on both his feet. Three facts in a row. No but, no although, no adjustment made.

And the word continually is doing real work. Not on occasion. Not when invited. His place was permanent and the sentence treats that as unremarkable.

You are able to have a permanent place rather than an accommodation, and 2 Samuel 9:13 has never once described his seat as something arranged around him. The Spirit of God is the one who establishes a man in a household, and the verse puts the table before the feet.

Your route is the route

Here is the practical part, and it is one change of assumption.

The route is yours. It is not adapted from somebody else's.

You have a route that is the route rather than a version of one, and 2 Samuel 9:13 has never once seated anybody as a substitute for the real thing. It is written that he did eat continually at the king's table, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present on a path that was chosen by the person using it.

Every article that adds a clause has already decided that the standard version is the walk down the street, and that yours is a modification of it. That is the thing to reverse and it reverses cleanly.

You have the good surfaces, the workable direction round the block, the wrong curb and the place where the path narrows all held in far more detail than whoever wrote the article about the end of the street, and none of that has never once been a special requirement. Second Samuel 9:13 states the seat at the table before it states the feet, and the Holy Spirit is the one who puts a man at the center of what his household does.

So the route is chosen by you, and everybody else adjusts to it, which is what happens in every household about a hundred other things and is not remarkable.

And the ten minutes is ten minutes. Not a shorter version. The same ten minutes as everybody else on this site, done in the ordinary way, on your ground.

You have detailed knowledge that nobody else in your household possesses, and having it has never once been the same as having a special requirement. The Spirit of God is the one who is present with a family moving on a route somebody chose, and 2 Samuel 9:13 puts the position before the condition.

Let them keep up

So here is the assignment, and the last part of it is the point.

Go out for ten minutes with somebody, on your own route, and let them keep up with you.

You are able to set the pace on your own ground, and doing that has never once been a courtesy anybody extended to you. It is written that Mephibosheth dwelt in Jerusalem and ate continually at the king's table, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is out on a path with two people going at one man's pace.

Take your nephew, or your daughter, or your brother. Somebody who will talk the whole way and not manage anything.

And go at your pace, which on a decent surface is faster than a walking teenager and both of you know it.

That last piece is not a joke and it is not a consolation. It is the actual structural point of the assignment. For ten minutes, the household is arranged around your movement rather than around theirs, and everybody in it is having an ordinary time, and nobody has been kind to anybody.

That is the difference between being in a family and being accommodated by one, and ten minutes of it a few times a week does something that no conversation about inclusion has ever done.

You have a place in the middle of this household, and being at the center of the ten minutes has never once required anybody to make an allowance. Second Samuel 9:13 states the table and then states the feet, and the Spirit of God is the one who does the seating.