The family that prays together, stays together.
Empty chairs around dining tables ain’t a strange sight in many of the houses I know. During lunch time, while everyone is busy with their engagements outside, dinner time is something that doesn’t bring the family together anymore; dining has become an independent event and the only thing that stays together during dinner are the utensils and cutleries.
So has the living room absorbed the silence of the members of the family, and offered space to the scripted loudness of the television screen. At homes where all the rooms does not have a television, by virtue of the position of television the family members are forced to come together and are at times united in watching a TV program, however, the focus is on a script and shot of the program than the script and layout of their own life.
More often, these programs are watched with our own individual ‘imaginations’ running havoc in our mind, associated with the characters being watched, everyone having our own associations and its own pleasurable imaginations, at times virtually making the room stinging if those thoughts were to send out a foul odor!!
Gone are the days where constructive evaluation of daily events took place around the dining table or in the warmth of the hearth. Parents discuss about the ‘things’ in life and house, what happened to that or this, or succumb to a deadly silences brought forward as a bye-product of the pressure carried from the business – a business that was initially set up to have a great family and a secured life; parents and children discuss about the ‘studies’ at a more surface level than focusing on values and principles of their doings, and they all become discussions in monosyllables.
There are houses where the only metaphor I can think of to represent its man and woman living as husband and wife is a rail track that never meets at one point but stays together parallel throughout the length. They share a bed; but their minds and hearts are miles apart! Their discussions are material, they have subtly concluded to themselves that there are only these much we can do together and therefore you live and let me live, leading to having different identities in different internet platforms and social clubs that facilitates parallel relationships that fills the gap.
Prayer brings a family together; praying together makes the family stay together; not just because of the prayer, and prayer here is not intended to mean as ‘asking for something’; it’s to reflect and thank, and to seek guidance. It is beautiful when we all sit in one place, together, and do the same thing, connected to one point – the true north, if you would like to put it in corporate language – and then get up from that revered state of mind. It brings in us a sense of belongingness, togetherness, and a sense to stay together. We are still human beings and we will still err, however, with that error comes a feeling of guilt and that by itself is an indicator of success, because it is when you err without guilt that you transform that error to a norm and follow that path.I haven’t graduated in this yet; but I know, every time I do this together, it has given me a comfortable feeling and a great hope of a different and bright future.
Shahir
