Monday 3 April 2006

Hebrews

Katy was sleeping fitfully, one arm flung across the bedclothes and one curled around a rather squashed elephant (missing one ear) up to her mouth, where her thumb had snuck in when her 'I'm a big girl' mind wasn't paying too much attention. She murmured a little in the summer heat and turned over. The bedroom door, standing at the top of the stairs, was open so her parents could hear her, and the dimmed landing light cast a warm glow into her room across the polished floorboards and onto the thick rug half-under the bed, only pausing on the way to show the walls as papered in what must in daylight be a pale blue shade with light patterning. Katy whimpered and woke up. She didn't know why, but in her sleepy five year old mind she knew one thing, and started to cry. She paused every so often to listen, tracking the familiar sounds between her cries: the brief sound of talking on TV as the living room door opened and then shut again ("I want my Mummy!" she articulated, to ensure she got the right adult), leaving only a murmur of BBC intonation, the click of the hall lightswitch and then the creak of the third stair from the bottom ("Mummy!" she whimpered inbetween her crying, for extra certainty). Tossed in bed and looking across a (now rather flattened) Elephant into the room, she watched, still whimpering, as a reassuring shadow began to appear on her floorboards and grow across it, until it was fully adult shadow sized, and more-or-less Mum-shaped, although distorted a bit where the rug was. The lightswitch clicked on and there was Mum: success!
Katy burst into a loud wailing. Through sobs and blubbering, she yelled (as only an sleepy, hot and agrieved five year old can), "I want your shadow!"

Further reading:
Hebrews 8,
Piper on Hebrews 8.1-5 (script) (mp3)
and on Hebrews 8.6-13 (script) (mp3)

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Did you write the paragraph, or is there a missing citation?

étrangère said...

I wrote it, inspired by the references at the bottom.

Anonymous said...

Oui, oui, j'ai noté les références. Bien fait!

I like your writing style. Perhaps I shall make time in the future to read more of your ginormous posts (e.g., your notes on Patrick.) When time is short, `tis awfully easy to note the length of a post and move along.

étrangère said...

Ah yes, my notes on Patrick weren't particularly well written, and were indeed stupidly ginormous - I got carried away: he said a lot of good stuff did Patrick!