Recently I was at a prayer gathering where someone picked upa piece of string and started playing "cats's cradle."  A few deft moves later and she had formed "Jacob's Ladder" a pattern I had learned a s a child (though had to 'not think' to do it correctly).  She commented at her surprise that she growing up in Aberdeen had played the same string games as I had in Northampton.

I wasn't so surprised having moved around a bit and played umpteen variations on the same games in GB companies across England and now Scotland.  Subtlies in words of songs or names given to the catcher in chase games help pinpoint where you are, but it's all much about the same really.  People have done whole PhDs in this field, investigating what it says about something or other.

It got me thinking about how we accpet as 'the same difference' ('same coffee, different pot' 'same meat different gravy') these variations in songs and games but get more twitchy when we go to a church that sings a slightly different song (metaphorically) or the 'game' is subtley different.  What is it that makes 'in and out the/those dusty bluebells/windows' authentically itself and not, say 'the farmer's in his/the den/dell'?  And what really matters?  No new ideas here, people have wrestled with them for centuries.  It just seems that if we accept minor local variations in children's games maybe we ought to be more accepting of cultural/regional/denominational variations in churches.