Unexamined posture

Photo by Luis Villasmil on Unsplash

My friend Abe gave me much to think about when he said the words “unexamined posture.” There are ways we stand and move and function in our homes and communities without really noticing the posture or position we are taking. It’s a habit. It’s assumed. It’s a conditioned way of doing and thinking. 

I’ve held onto these words for a couple years and they are guiding my curiosity as I study and learn in community. What postures (attitudes and ways of being in the world) have I inherited from world in which I was raised, the generations before me? How have I been conditioned? In faithfulness to God’s Beloved Community, what I am I being called to notice? 

Unexamined Posture

Hour upon hour
Day after day 
Weeks on end
Until decades have gone by.
He hunches over the operating table 
Skilled with a keen eye and quick hands.
Trained in the work of his father and his father before that.
Hours of physical labor have shaped his posture
Muscles drawing his shoulders forward
A slight hunch to his back
A tilt to his neck to achieve his view.
Like his father before him and his father before that.
It’s how he stands all day. It’s normal. It’s comfortable. 
Until somebody says, “stand up straight, hold your shoulders back”
And he stands in front of the mirror to notice.

Years have gone by and this accommodating posture has gone unexamined.
Afterall, he looks like his father and his father before that.
But now he has noticed, now there is a choice to make.
Walk away from this unexamined posture and live with its comfort handed down from years.
Or do the hard work of retraining muscles
Experience the discomfort of standing straight when the old posture worked fine.
Being self-aware and accepting the notice of others when the muscles retreat to their old posture.

What is your unexamined posture?
The patterns in which you sit like your parent before you and the parent before that?
Are you willing to listen to the correction of others
Take notice of yourself
Do the hard work of retraining muscles that have accommodated in position for generations?
What is the unexamined posture in the comfort of our power structure, 
In patterns of dominance
or surrendering to being less-than?
The generationally flexed muscles exerting control, keeping us hunched with a tilted neck?
Are we willing to listen, to stand in front of the mirror 
To be self-aware
To do the hard and often painful work of retraining muscles to stand straight for the generations to come?

in this together…