Sunday 2nd September (22B)

I’m sorry this post didn’t make it sooner: the week was filled with a trip interstate to visit family. We’re home again and I wasn’t going to offer another haiku but the Gospel reading for Sunday ‘rang a bell’…

Words from my childhood,
preceding grace and eating:
“Wash your hands, Jeffrey!”

Curiously enough, years later, those very same words were the catch-cry of a TV commercial for the gritty, heavy duty soap of my childhood.

Yes, I gradually came to understand washing my hands before eating as a good, practical thing to do and not just something done in compliance with a parental edict. I also came to understand that, no matter how clean my hands before eating or how clean and safe the food I put in my mouth, what came out of my mouth was a different matter: hygiene and holiness are not to be confused.
        © Jeff Shrowder, 2012.
  More for Sunday 22B…