A Different View - May 2011
Henry, aged 3, assured me recently that cows can in fact jump over the moon. Not your average farmyard variety, of course, but specially trained cows (vachletes perhaps?) – I imagine it’s all in the run-up.
This is one of the delights that little children bring – one of the reasons why when we welcome them Christ comes to meet us.
They see the world differently. Having no expectations, no bank of experience to draw on, concerning the normal behaviour of cows, for example, they can reveal to us possibilities, aspects of life we no longer see, outcomes we have long since given up expecting.
As a dissenter I have always treasured the freedom to see things differently. As a non-conformist I defend the right to think, speak and act in ways that I believe are true, whether or not they conform to the views and behaviour of the folk around me.
There is, of course, a serious danger in this. For those of us with a cussed temperament, the curmudgeonly, the professional sore thumbs, not conforming can be a cover for arrogance, egotism and a general refusal to cooperate. I know I have sometimes been a nuisance.
But in general I believe it is a healthy thing.
Sometimes those who stand a little to one side see situations with fresh eyes.
Sometimes they offer solutions not available to the more convergent thinker.
Sometimes they open up again possibilities that the experience of past failure has shut off from others.
Sometimes they bring glimpses of truth, ways of understanding Scripture, ways of seeing the life of Christ and his church that require the key of non-conformity.
I find myself wondering what kind of church Henry could envisage? Quite a spectacular one I imagine.
Often those who bring a quirky ‘outside the camp’ dimension into a strongly conforming community – the Baptist Union, for example – are unsure how their presence and their ideas will be received. And indeed they can meet with a closing of ranks – a response of hostility, a cry of “Tradition!”. Or they can be parked quietly and politely somewhere up a creek.
But it has been my experience, as someone who has always paddled quite an eccentric canoe, that if the offbeat voice expresses itself with courtesy it is generally welcomed. Those who are deeply rooted and solidly at home in their universe welcome the freshness, the creativity and the fun that can come from the oddball.
And who can resist flying cows?
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