Kinesthetics

Many artists, writers and poets down the centuries have shared the insight that children come into the world possessing great wisdom and insight, and fully equipped with the necessary tools for spiritual growth and development, only to find that adults spend inordinate amounts of time making sure that the tools of observation, reflection and wonder are not used and so grow rusty and stiff.

This morning was a bright autumn day, cold but clear and bright. We took the whole of one of our little primary schools (about thirty children plus the staff and assistants), onto the playground for Sacred Posture. We used a new pattern, devised by me, based on the four elements; Earth, Air, Fire and Water. If you chose or wish or need to know, its origins in the canticle Benedicite and St Francis “Song of Brother Sun” are very obvious. We even use some of the words of WH Draper’s hymn “All creatures of our God and King”. But the movements come from the Chinese tradition of Tai Chi Chuan. And the four elements owe a lot to the Medicine Wheel prayers of Native American tradition.

But the kids don’t want or need to know that. They love being able to stand still, between the earth and the sky and try to feel the world turning. They can push against the water in the swimming movements; they can be windmills turning against the resistance of the air; they can encompass the globe of the planet in their huge, slow circles; they can feel the heat and smell the smoke of the imaginary fires they make with their wriggling fingers.

-That was kinesthetics, said their teacher, when we got into the staffroom later.
- Really? I said, I didn’t know I could do that!
- You can, she said.
- What is it? I said.
- Look it up, She said.
- We can tick lots of the county council’s boxes doing that, she said.
- Yes, I said, If we were that sort of school, I said.
- Which we’re not, she said.


Several people from church came by as we stood, silent, motionless between earth and sky, still, as one, or whirled, slowly, our windmill arms.

- What was that? One asked later.
I explained as best I could.
- Shame we can’t get them into church, she said, You should be teaching them their Bibles. They don’t know anything these days.