Minding Your Head at Smithills Hall

One sign that the tourist repeatedly encounters at Smithills Hall, Bolton, is ‘Please mind your head’. I am not a tall man, but through many of the doorways was I obliged to stoop lest I banged my head. It is sometimes said that the medieval diet was so poor that the people of that era were small and stunted, and for whom smaller doors were required.

I suspect that the average denizen of the Middle Ages ate more veg than his modern descendant, and certainly less sugar, preservatives and monosodium glutamate. Smaller doorways lose less heat, and also require people to slow down when moving about the house. Intruders and thieves move about hastily; legitimate occupants may take their time.

We Christians must ‘mind’ our heads. At conversion, we receive a metaphorical heart transplant, the one of stone replaced by the one of flesh. Yet I wonder if some of my fellow Christians opt to have a brain transplant, too, swapping grey matter for a bag of damp sawdust. Christianity is not complicated, but it is intelligent. Christ renews our minds as well as our hearts. So let us think about our faith and not act like simpletons. Read books. Learn things. Feed your brains. But trust, simply, Him who saved you.

God be in my head, and in my understanding:
God be in mine eyes, and in my looking;
God be in my mouth, and in my speaking;
God be in my heart, and in my thinking:
God be at mine end, and at my departing.

-H.W. Davies