Part 17 (1/2)

5. What characteristics should distinguish play on Sundays from other days? Is it wise to attempt thus to distinguish this day?

6. Criticize the suggestions on occupations for Sunday afternoons.

7. Recall any especially helpful forms of the use of this day in your childhood, or coming under your observation.

FOOTNOTES:

[31] See chap. xvii, ”The Family and the Church.”

[32] See chap. vii on ”Directed Activity,” and the references for study at its end.

[33] Much may be learned by a study of Primary plans in a modern Sunday school. See Athearn, _The Church School_, chap. vi.

[34] Since we are dealing here especially with religious education in the family, the author refers to his more extended treatment of the question of children in church services in _Efficiency in the Sunday School_, chap. xv.

CHAPTER XIV

THE MINISTRY OF THE TABLE

Shall the periods for meals be for the body only or shall we see in them happy occasions for the enriching of the higher life? Upon the answer depends whether the table shall be little more than a feeding-trough or the scene of constant mental and character development. In some memories the meals stand out only in terms of food, while pictures of dishes and fragments of food fill the mind; in others there are borne through all life pictures of happy faces and thoughts of cheer, of knowledge gained and ideals created in the glow of conversation.

-- 1. THE OPPORTUNITY

The family is together as a united group at the table more than anywhere besides. Table-talk, by its informality and by the aid of the pleasures of social eating, is one of the most influential means of education.

Depend upon it, children are more impressed by table-talk than by teacher-talk or by pulpit-talk. They expect moralizing on the other occasions, but here the moral lessons throw out no warning; they meet no opposition; they are--or ought to be, if they would be effective--a natural part of ordinary conversation and, by being part and parcel of everyday affairs, they become normally related to life. The table is the best opportunity for informal, indirect teaching, and this is for children the natural and only really effective form of moral instruction.

The child comes to these social occasions with a hungry mind as well as with an empty stomach. His mind is always receptive--even more so than his stomach; at the table he is absorbing that which will stay with him much longer than his food. Even if we were thinking of his food alone, we should still do well to see that the table is graced by happy and helpful conversation; nothing will aid digestion more than good cheer of the spirit; it stimulates the organs and, by diverting attention from the mere mechanics of eating, it tends to that most desirable end, a leisurely consumption of food.

The general conversation of the family group has more to do with character development in children than we are likely to realize, and the table is peculiarly the opportunity for general conversation. Here, most of all, we need to watch its character and consider its teaching effects. Where father scolds or mother complains the children grow fretful and quarrelsome. Where father spends the time in reciting the sharp dealing of the market or the political ring, where mother delights in dilating on the tinsel splendors of her social rivalries, they teach the children that life's object is either gain at any cost or social glory. But it is just as easy to do precisely the opposite, to speak of the pleasures found in simpler ways, to glory in goodness and kindness, and to teach, by relating the worthy things of the day, the worth of love and truth and high ideals. The news of the day may be discussed so as to make this world a game of grab, inviting youth to cast conscience and honor to the winds and to plunge into the greedy struggle, or so as to make each day a book of beautiful pictures of life's best pleasures and enduring prizes.

-- 2. DIRECTING TABLE-TALK

But table-talk, helpful, cheerful, and educative, does not occur by accident. It comes, first, from our own constant and habitual thought of the meals in social and spiritual, as well as in physical, terms. And it reaches its possibilities as we endeavor to create and direct the kind of conversation that is desired. ”Let all your speech be seasoned with salt,” wrote the apostle, and we might add, let your salt be seasoned with good speech. That is the quality we must seek, the seasoning of healthful, saving, and not insipid, speech.

One of the great advantages of ”grace before meat” lies in this: it gives a tone to the occasion. Its chief meaning is surely that we remind ourselves of the ever-present guest who is also the giver of all good. Where the grace is not a perfunctory act, but rather the welcoming of such a guest, the meal has started on a high level. We cannot do better than so to act and speak as those who take the divine presence for granted. We need not preach about it; we need only to a.s.sume it and move on the level of that friends.h.i.+p. Children will feel it; they will seek to answer to it, and will find pleasure in the very thought which they have perhaps never expressed in words.

The central idea of the grace suggests another means of helpful influences at the table, by bringing into our homes, for the meals, the friends whose lives will lift these younger ones. It is worth everything to live even for an hour with good and broadening lives. There are obligations to our guests to be considered, and their wishes should be consulted, but one always feels that children are being cheated when they are sent to eat at another table and deprived of the peculiar intimate touch with lives that bring the benefits of travel and experience. Ask your own memory what some persons who ate at the table with you in childhood meant to you.

The wise hostess knows that even when she brings together the group of mature folks, and even when they are wise and witty, she must be prepared adroitly to inspire the conversation or it may flag at times.

How much more does the conversation need direction where we have the same group every day composed largely of immature persons! When you have thought of all the portions and all the plates, have you thought of the food for the spirit?

Before suggesting methods of selection and direction, let a word of explanation be said: food for the spirit is not confined to theology, to hymns and the Bible; it is whatever will help us to feel and think of life as an affair of the spirit. And this must come in very simple terms, by the elementary steps, for young folks. It will be whatever will in any way help us to live more kindly, more cheerfully, more as though this really were G.o.d's world and all folks his family. Whatever does this is truly religious.