What Alice Learned in Wonderland

"But I don't want to go among mad people," said Alice.
"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat. "We're all mad here."


I keep thinking about these words as more and more tragedies
get news coverage - from family disasters here, chemical weapons in Syria, hostage situations, gang violence in our large cities.....

Are we all "mad" down here?

More from Alice in Wonderland....

     Alice opened the door and found it led into a small passage, not much bigger than a rat-hole: she knelt down and looked along the passage into the loveliest garden you ever saw. How she longed to get out of that dark hall and wander about among those beds of bright flowers and cool fountains, but she couldn't even get her head through the doorway; "and even if my head would go through," thought poor Alice, "of would be of very little use without my shoulders."


So eager was she to be able to get through that small doorway into the perfect exquisite garden, that she risked her very life by  picking up the bottle that said "Drink Me"-- knowing it might be poison -- and then to drink it all -- hoping it will enable to get her into that garden!  (She had to get smaller!)

C. S. Lewis recalls a time when he and his brother, as children, created a sort of small miniature garden. It was perfect and throughout the rest of his life he remembered the yearning he felt for a place of quiet beauty and safety - the kind of desperate longing we all feel for something more than this -- surely there is something more....or is this all there is? It is just not possible that this is as good as it gets? Is it?

Lewis reminds us that we have those feelings simply because there is more -- we were not created for this world! We were created for a far more perfect and glorious life. This world is only The Shadowlands, he says.

Anyway you look at it, we have to be very small to get into that garden! To get to where we yearn to be.

And Jesus told us we had to be humble and like little children....in order to be a part of His Kingdom.







P.S. Alice ate little cakes and got smaller....I eat cakes and get larger -- what does that mean?