If we want to populate society with powerful and responsible citizens, then we need to put more little people on big horses.
The thing about little people riding big horses is the chance it gives everyone to learn something. I saw this when my daughter Rosaling rode in an equestrian therapy for the handicap program. The horses learned to be gentle and take orders from a small being, which is pretty much the life of race, work, show and ordinary coral and barn horses anyway
The little girls and boys had a take-away too — the exquisite opportunity to gain confidence and grow in responsibility which are the very things little people will occasionally need as they go along in the world.
And if we let our little ones ride horses, then they most like will or should get the opportunity to have another shaping experience common to life everywhere — mucking out stalls.
Horses make muck, and someone has to muck it out.
It can be quite successfully argued that we all, children, horses and adults alike, need to grow in confidence and responsibilty and that we all have the chance because we all have stalls to muck. We all have our bathrooms and we have our interior stalls — mental stalls, emotional stalls and spiritual stalls, and that they all need to be mucked out, from time to time. There is no need to drag out studies or statistics or defining narratives to establish such a thesis.
Look inward, and follow your nose — muckish!
I think most of us know we aren’t perfect. If we live or have lived in a family, we know we are not perfect. We have been told, by those who know us best, or worst — repeatedly!
I am charmed by the Biblical story of the fall, although it strikes me that the famous narrative is badly misnamed. The traditional title, “The Fall” works okay I guess to cover one of the actions, but really there are several falls the story, from several angles by which the participants fall, not one. The mythic elements of the tale begin to take on a very present-day and realish character as the stumbling couple falls away from health, falls away from personal responsiblity, falls away from a safe home and falls away from each other. And while leaning dangerously, and eventually heading for a hard bounce off the garden floor, the wayward couple falls behind the trees to a place where they hope even God “can’t” find them.
I am charmed by the story. I am not charmed by the various forms of physical and moral tumbling, but I am charmed by the rightingx, the straightenings, the hand up that occurs after the ignominious and deadly falls.
I am charmed, in this story, by the behavior of God.
Genesis 3:9 states that after the falling out, that the“LORD God called … “Where are you?”
God called.
This is a perfect portrait of God. After failure, God is a caller. God is always the one calling. God called, immediately. He must have had Adam and Eve’s mobile number on speed dial. He called, right away. He texted. And God texted them too, and his text is the book of Genesis
God has always texted.
When we flatten out, God texts, not to blame but to help. They blamed each other, God came to them to stop the blaming.
Why did God call out to Adam and Eve? Because God wanted to begin to muck out their stalls.
Once I backed my SUV into a telephone pole. When I got home and “mentioned” it to my wife, she said, “It’s ok, that’s why we have insurance.”
The grace in that, the lack of judgment, beautiful; God the same. After Adam and Eve’s wreck, God brought out his insurance policy, which was his love. God’s call to them, as they hid behind the trees in the garden, tells us what we need to know about how God reacts to our failure. God didn’t abandon them when they failed. God didn’t reject them and decide not to have a relationship with them.
God loved them. They hid, but God went out and found them, and then began a process, which of course including restorative consequences, to stand them upright again and muck things out.
Theologians refer to this story as the story of “original sin;”it is, but it is also and even primarily the story of original love!
The first family fell. The first family couldn’t muck out the muck that followed the fall.
But God , He put them back in the saddle and led them home to a stall that he had cleaned up. I like the story of the fall. It’s not so much a story of our failure as it is as story about God’s success.
God fixes falls, which means God puts us back on horses again and gives us more opportunities to ride, to be responsible, to gain confidence and to finally, grow up and get back to mucking out stalls again ourselves.
I like it, a mucking-out-the-stall kind of God.
I like it, a standing-back-up-fallen-beings kind of God.
I love it, a responsiblity-restoring kind of God.
Such fetching behavior!
It’s just so God.
Thrive! 