Arthur says: “Mad’s only what you can’t make sense of.”

Bob’s got a busy day running a boarding house for crazy people. He’s got no time to be looking at the day or discussing the universe. No space for mystery or insight.

Easier to dismiss whatever’s strange as ‘mad’. It’s one way of not having to think about it. Arthur gives him a gentle rebuke, reminding him that calling something or someone ‘mad’ is an admission of ignorance.

Bob’s not the only one in this life who’s too preoccupied with their own tasks to be able to devote time to anything that’s not immediately obvious. Few of us leave space in our lives to dwell on things we can’t make sense of. If it doesn’t fit within our routines or our rational frameworks, it must be mad. In other words, experiences that disturb the ‘norm’ (not to be confused with Norm) are sidelined and disregarded. All too often the people who don’t fit are sidelined as well. They go on living on the margins of life, because we can’t make sense of them – or more truthfully, can’t make space for them.

Arthur has acres of space, both for people and experiences. There’s lots of things he doesn’t understand. Like why people are so fixated on money that they ruin their health. Or why he and his friends are regarded as no-hopers. Most of all he doesn’t understand how people can’t understand his gentle message to them. But he’s willing to live in that kind of mixed up world, knowing that he probably never will make sense of it.

There’s a whole dimension to life that he participates in that lots of other people don’t seem to understand: the realm of the spiritual. Arthur hears voices and has insights. So did Buddha and Jesus and Martin Luther King. Maybe they were all mad? Or maybe not. Maybe we should each take the time to open our lives to a range of experiences, rather than closing ourselves to everything that seems mad. Who knows? We may even hear the voice of Arthur.

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