Nonconformity
Audio / Produced by The High CallingTranscript
Author Cameron Hawley was with his grandmother near the end of her life. One day she reminisced about her years as a young bride in the Dakota Territory in 1878. Hawley asked her what changes since then she considered most significant.
She said, “When I was a girl, so many men stood out as individuals. Now so few do. More and more, men yield to some terrible compulsion to conform—even to look alike. Your grandfather knew that a man finds happiness only by walking his own path across the earth.”
This is Howard Butt, Jr., of Laity Lodge. We are all made for community. But within community, the great people are driven not by public conformity but by personal character . . . in the high calling of our daily work.
But the noble man makes noble plans, and by noble deeds he stands.
Photo by Edward Sheriff Curtis, 1905: "Oasis in the Badlands, South Dakota."
