Every place has its culture. It usually shows up in the rules and regulations. Take a look at the rules and regs governing any group (spoken or unspoken), and you begin to get a feel for what has carved and shaped the culture.
So, on a Life Group retreat this weekend, I smiled as I read the signs posted almost everywhere, and specifically mentioned by the caretakers in the sign-in briefing…
Two things about this list…
Firstly, what was it about the talcum?! What terrible event had involved talcum powder, that it now was specifically banned? Who did what to whom? It must have been devastating, and perhaps even a repeated cataclysmic event, that resulted in a non-talc culture. Interesting, I can’t remember the last time I touched talcum powder since our kids left nappies, so I felt a little confused… asides from parents of babies, are there lots of people wandering around with talcum powder?
Secondly, and this was rather fiendish, but look as I may, there simply weren’t any mats to hang up. Should I have supplied my own, or did I misplace the other ones unknowingly?! Did someone forget to put the mats out, or was this rule a remnant of past sins that had now passed into obscurity because of the decline in mats?
Hmmmmm…. culture is interesting stuff.