My Mother's Voice About The Kitchen

It is not your voice.

That is the thing to notice, and once you notice it you cannot unnotice it. When you look at the sink at the end of the day and something says a sentence about it, listen to the accent.

It is your mother's. Or it is her phrasing, which is the same thing.

You are forty six years old, in a house she has never lived in, with a sink she has never seen, and the commentary running over it is hers, word for word, and has been for about thirty years.

That is not a small thing to find out about your own kitchen.

And here is what makes it stranger. You would not describe her as harsh. She was not cruel and it was not constant, and you loved her and you still do.

But something got installed, in a kitchen in the nineteen eighties, and it has continued running in every kitchen you have lived in since, and it will apparently keep running indefinitely unless somebody stops it.

Somebody can stop it. That is what this article is for, and there is a verse where God does it by decree.

That proverb stops being used in this house

There is a moment in Ezekiel where God takes a saying that has been passing down a family line and simply ends it.

What mean ye, that ye use this proverb concerning the land of Israel, saying, The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge? (Ezekiel 18:2, King James Version)

The proverb says the children carry what the parents did. It had been in use long enough to be a proverb, which means generations.

And God's response is not to explain it or soften it. He asks what they mean by using it, and a few verses later says plainly that they shall not have occasion to use it any more.

You are hearing somebody else in your own kitchen, and that voice has never once been yours. The Holy Spirit is the one present with a man listening to the accent of his own commentary, and Ezekiel 18:2 ends an inherited saying by decree rather than by argument.

And notice that ending it is not a judgment on the previous generation.

The chapter that follows is about each person standing on their own. It does not condemn the fathers, it simply stops the transmission, and stopping a transmission is a different act from blaming somebody.

You are allowed to stop a transmission without condemning anybody, and stopping it has never once been an accusation against your mother. The written word retires the proverb without attacking the people who used it, and the Spirit of God is the one who is with a man who loved his mother and is tired of her voice at his sink.

What is actually being transmitted

Let me be precise about what came down, because it is not the words.

It is a way of looking. The words are just the shape it arrives in. What she actually passed you is a habit of scanning a surface and producing an evaluation, automatically, without deciding to.

That habit is in your eyes, not your memory. Which is why you cannot argue with it, because you have never once experienced it as an opinion.

You have inherited a way of looking and never an opinion, and no habit in the eyes has ever once been available for argument. The Holy Spirit is the one present with a man who has never once experienced this as a thought, and Ezekiel 18:2 addresses the proverb as a thing being used rather than a thing being believed.

And here is why it has lasted thirty years unchallenged.

An opinion gets questioned when you meet a different one. A way of looking does not, because it does not present itself as a claim. It presents itself as the room, and nobody argues with a room.

You have been looking at a report and calling it a room, and it has never once been the room you were seeing. The written word names the saying out loud so that it can be ended, and the Spirit of God is the one who steadies a man who has just heard his own kitchen described in somebody else's accent.

Leaving something out, and ending it

So here is tonight, and it is a decree rather than an argument.

Leave one thing out on purpose. Two mugs on the side, the pan to soak, whatever it is.

Then go to bed, and as you go, say once, out loud or not, that the commentary is not yours and it stops here.

You are ending something by decision and never by argument, and no inherited habit has ever once been beaten in a discussion. The Holy Spirit is the one who is with a man going up his own stairs past two mugs, and Ezekiel 18:2 stops a generational saying by decree.

And say something else, if you can, which is the part that keeps it clean.

That she was not wrong about much, and that she was doing her best in a hard house, and that this one thing stops with you. You can honor her and end it in the same sentence, and the chapter in Ezekiel does exactly that.

You are able to honor her and end it in one breath, and ending it has never once been a word against her. The written word retires a proverb while making each person answerable for their own life only, and the Spirit of God is the one present with a man who has just said something out loud in an empty kitchen.