By: Jim Taylor

We had a guest minister one Sunday morning. Bill Laurie was a very tall man. When he talked with the children, he sat down on the floor with them.
           Then he looked around, and he said, "Things certainly look different from down here."
           Most of us take for granted that our perspective is the natural one. Even the only possible one.
           We forget that "our perspective" depends on factors we take for granted - such as the fact that we typically stand erect, on two legs, with our eyes a certain height above our feet.
           A five-year-old boy asked me a question once, during the coffee hour after church. Our son had died. He wanted to know where our son was now. His grandmother - with the wisdom it takes a lifetime to develop - didn't want to brush him off with pat answers.
           His question mattered to me, too. So I squatted down, so we could talk eye to eye.
           While I was down there, I looked around. We were surrounded by adults. Mostly, what I saw was knees. If I looked up higher, I saw belt buckles. Faces - which we usually consider the primary expression of a person's character - were a long way away, impossibly high above.
           It was strange experience for me. But as I sat there, I realized that's the normal perspective for small children, pets, and people confined to wheelchairs.
           It's only when you change perspective that you realize how restricted your previous perspective might have been.
           At that service, Bill Laurie wanted the children to experience a different perspective. When you're always looking up, a difference would be to look down at adults, the way adults look down at kids.
           He picked one girl up, and sat her on his shoulder.
           "What do you see?" he asked her.
           "Bald spots," Sonja replied delightedly.
           Laughter rippled through the congregation.
           But you know, if you're small, you would never see bald spots from above.
           If we're unaware of how mere physical height affects perspective, we're even less aware of the cultural factors that influence us. As a male, for example, I cannot imagine what it is like to give birth. Not just to experience the pain of labor, but the nine months of feeling something growing inside of me. Something that is not me. And is not a tumor. And that will eventually have its own independent life.
           Similarly, I cannot imagine how I might think, and feel, and react, had I been brought up in a Hindu or Moslem culture. All I can be sure of is that I would see the world differently.
           My western world values individual freedom, personal autonomy, competition, consumerism, progress. But not every culture espouses those values. In some, it's anathema for a son to dream of doing better than his father. Heresy, to pick your own spouse. Blasphemy, to discard tradition.
           We can learn to see other perspectives. But it doesn't come naturally.

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Copyright © 2007 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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