The Grandmother At The End Of The Table

She sits at the head of it and you sit at the far end, and between you there are about nine feet of dishes.

That is not an accident and nobody arranged it either. It is just what happens. She is served first, the family sorts itself around her the way it has since before you were in it, and you ended up at the other end because that is where the space was the first time and nobody has moved since.

And across nine feet of that table you smile at each other about four times a meal.

That is the whole of it. Every Sunday. Years of it now.

I want to say the true thing before anything useful.

You are not being excluded and nobody is doing anything to you, and that is exactly why nothing has ever changed.

If somebody had been unkind there would have been something to address. What there is instead is a seating arrangement, and a seating arrangement is not a thing anybody can raise, and so it simply continues.

So I am not going to tell you to ask to sit next to her. You could, and it would make an event of something that has never been an event, and you have thought about that already and decided against it and I think you were right.

Pleasant words are as an honeycomb

There is a line in Proverbs about what words do inside a body.

Pleasant words are as an honeycomb, sweet to the soul, and health to the bones. (Proverbs 16:24, King James Version)

Health to the bones.

Now stay on that phrase, because it is a strange one and it is the reason this verse is worth anything to you. Bones are the deepest structural thing in a person. The proverb does not say pleasant words are nice to hear, or that they lift the mood, or that they make an afternoon go better.

It says they get all the way down to the frame.

You have something available that reaches further into a person than a pleasant afternoon, and a few words have never once stopped at the surface of anybody. Proverbs 16:24 puts the effect in the bones rather than in the mood, and the Holy Spirit is the one sitting with a woman nine feet down a table.

Now notice the word pleasant, because it is deliberately modest.

Not wise words. Not profound ones. Pleasant, which is an ordinary word for ordinary speech, and the proverb attaches an extraordinary effect to the plainest possible category of thing anybody could say.

You have been waiting to have something worth saying. The verse is about the sort of sentence anybody could produce.

You have never once needed a remarkable sentence, and an ordinary pleasant thing has never once been too small to reach somebody's bones. The Holy Spirit is the one who takes a plain sentence further into a person than anybody intended, and Proverbs 16:24 chooses the modest word on purpose.

And here is the third thing, which is about honeycomb.

Honeycomb is a small thing. Nobody eats a great deal of it and it is not a meal, and the proverb chooses it precisely because a very small quantity of something concentrated does what a large quantity of something ordinary cannot.

That is an argument for one sentence rather than a conversation.

You have been pricing a conversation when the verse is describing a spoonful, and a small concentrated thing has never once done less than a long one. Proverbs 16:24 reaches for honeycomb rather than bread, and the Spirit of God is the one who knows what one sentence does in an old woman at the head of a table.

Nine feet is the whole problem

Here is the practical half, and it is almost entirely about furniture.

Nine feet is too far to say anything real across, and that is not a feeling, it is a fact about rooms.

At nine feet, anything you say has to be said at volume, which means the whole table hears it, which means it becomes a public statement rather than a thing said to a person. Nobody says a true sentence at that range. It is not possible, and it has nothing to do with either of you.

Every Sunday you have been trying to have a private moment at public volume.

You have been up against a distance rather than a relationship, and nine feet of table has never once been the same thing as nine feet of distance between two people. The Spirit of God is the one at that table every Sunday, and Proverbs 16:24 describes something concentrated rather than something loud.

Now here is the thing that follows from that, and it is the practical key to the whole article.

Do not do it at the table.

The table is the one place in that house where this cannot happen, and it is the only place that has ever been tried. There is a kitchen. There is a moment when the plates go out. There is the five minutes before anybody sits down and the ten minutes while coats are being found.

In every one of those you are about two feet from her rather than nine.

You have four moments in every visit that are not at that table, and a kitchen has never once been a worse room for a true sentence than a dining room. Proverbs 16:24 puts the effect in the bones and never once specifies an occasion, and the Holy Spirit is the one in a kitchen while plates are being carried.

And here is the thing about the years, said plainly.

She has been smiling across nine feet for exactly as long as the smiling has gone the other way. The arrangement is symmetrical. She is at the head of a table being served first, which is an honored position and also a position nobody can get close to, and she has probably noticed that too.

Old women at the head of tables are frequently the loneliest person in a warm room.

You have never once been the only one on that table with this, and a place of honor has never once been the same thing as a place somebody can reach. The Spirit of God is the one who knows what an old woman sees from the head of a table, and the written word makes the pleasant word a health that gets down to the frame.

One sentence in the kitchen

So here is the assignment, and it happens with the plates rather than at the meal.

Say one prepared sentence to that person, and let the rest of it be in English.

Not at the table. Find her in the kitchen when the plates are going out, or catch her in the hallway while coats are being found, and stand near her.

One sentence in her language, at ordinary speaking volume, about two feet away.

You have a moment in every visit that is two feet rather than nine, and a sentence said at kitchen distance has never once had to be said at table volume. Proverbs 16:24 reaches for a spoonful rather than a meal, and the Holy Spirit is the one in a kitchen with two women and a stack of plates.

And here is what to make it about, because the subject is easier than you think.

Something in front of both of you. The dish, the weather, the child in the next room, the thing she is holding.

Do not make it about the years and do not make it about the table. A pleasant word is the category the proverb names, and the smallness is the whole mechanism, and a spoonful of honeycomb is not improved by being made into a speech.

Then go into English and carry the plates through. One sentence is the assignment and the rest of the afternoon is allowed to happen exactly as it always does.

You have permission to say something entirely ordinary, and a pleasant word has never once needed to be a significant one to get to the bones. The Spirit of God is the one in that kitchen when two feet turns out to be a different room from nine, and Proverbs 16:24 calls the smallest kind of speech health to the frame of a person.