By JC
In chess, I watched a pawn make it all the way across the board. In cards, I wondered what happened when you put one rule above the whole deck. Then I dropped a handful of sticks on a table and found out how much trouble I could cause with one finger.
The game is called Pick Up Sticks. You stand the sticks in a bunch, let them fall, and take turns lifting one at a time. If another stick moves, your turn is over. Everybody can see the pile. Everybody can see your hand. And everybody except you can see that the yellow one is about to move.
I usually go for the stick I want. It’s halfway down the pile, which I regard as a technicality. I can see both ends, so I figure I’ve got a pretty good handle on the situation. I get one finger underneath it. Three sticks twitch, and suddenly I’m explaining to a child the difference between a twitch and a move.
That child knows exactly what happened. The stick moved.
What rests on what
Paul writes, “Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.” A few lines later he says, “For every man shall bear his own burden.” I used to read those two lines and wonder whether Paul had changed his mind between verses. The first one is Galatians 6:2. The second is Galatians 6:5. There’s hardly time to turn the page.
I thought about those verses with my finger under that stick. Some things are mine to carry. Some things I can help you carry. And sometimes I’m so eager to relieve a burden that I haven’t bothered to ask you which end you’d like me to take.
I’ve done that with people I love. Somebody tells me what happened on Tuesday and by the time they get to Wednesday I have a plan, a diagnosis, and a speech for the person they were talking about. They may have wanted ten minutes to finish telling me about Tuesday.
Paul starts that same chapter by talking about restoring someone “in the spirit of meekness,” and then he adds, “considering thyself.” I can imagine those last two words coming from across the table. Before I start explaining why the pile is such a mess, I might take a look at the finger that’s in it.
Take another look
A stick can look free from where I’m sitting. From your chair, you can see the place where it crosses under another one. The game gives us the same pile and different views of it. That may be the most familiar thing about it.
When I say these games put things in plain sight, this is what I mean. I can see the sticks and still miss what rests on what. It helps to listen to the person on the other side of the table, especially if they’re eight and have already beaten me twice.
I still want the one in the middle. But there’s a loose stick near the edge, and for once I can get my fingers around it without making anybody hold their breath. I lift it. The rest of the pile stays where it is. From where I’m sitting, I can see a little more of the table now.
“Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.”
— Galatians 6:2, KJV
