Rebel, rebel...

In church recently for a meeting when it struck me, yet again, how I don't seem to be able to behave myself in 'serious' situations ...attacks of giggles, sarcasm and a heightened innuendo awareness all plague me.

In said meeting when raising a certain point I knowingly said "to play devil's advocate"; common linguistic usage maybe and no jaws hit the floor but maybe the devil was closer than I thought!!

Chatting to a friend about it this morning I said "I don't know why such situations bring out the worst in me? He said "Maybe you're just a rebel".

Now it's not the first time it's been said but it still shocks me, after all I'm a nice middle class, relatively conservative girl who has a clean driving license and the closest I've come to criminal behaviour is the odd mobile phone call on the move.

So I thought well what does it mean to be a rebel. One dictionary definitions put it thus ...

1. To resist or defy an authority or a generally accepted convention.

And I have to say I like the idea of challenging a generally held convention, not for the sake of it but to see if it really holds true for me, rather than just blindly following.

I have to say it is often the safe/inane/basic nature of the dialogue at such meetings that causes my badness to stir from it's slumber, wanting to ask "really", "are you sure", "but why", "does it have to be", "can't we do better?". And even occasionally "was that really worth the energy of thought and use of breath?", which is rich seeing as my limited brain is oh so capable of making ridiculously ill-thought through statements all too easily.

I considered too well known rebels - Jesus, St Francis, Emmeline Pankhurst, Martin Luther King, Bart Simpson ... and the notion began to appeal, after all look at what these people achieved. Perhaps if I embrace my inner rebel my life will be more effective, who knows where it may lead.

Obviously you need to be a rebel with a cause, especially when you're not as good looking or zeitgeist capturing as James Dean or Marlon Brando but as Thomas Caryle so reassuringly puts it...

Men seldom, or rather never for a length of time and deliberately, rebel against anything that does not deserve rebelling against.