This week, as I have been planning a Sunday message based on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and particularly asking myself what are the profound truths, universal themes, in the Mock Turtle’s story.
The Mock Turtle begins his story by declaring that he used to be a real turtle; now he is just a mock turtle.
Mock Turtle soup doesn’t have any turtle meat in it at all.
Maybe when we become a mockery of our real selves, we are being a “mock.”
Currently, the news is filled with stories of two heart-breaking mass shootings.
The grief and anger of the residents of El Paso have filled my heart and mind with compassion and with bewilderment. The residents of Dayton, Ohio also are grieving their losses.
I don’t know much about either shooter but I know that there cannot be any true satisfaction for either of them.
My mind goes to the question: What kind of a person goes into a Walmart and shoots innocent people? What kind of person targets one race of people? What kind of a person goes into a bar, and kills people including his younger sister?
What could have made these senseless acts of violence acceptable in their minds?
Ernest Holmes is clear. We can pray for anything we want as long as it is something we truly desire and that it does not hurt anybody else.
I come back often to my favorite quote in the Science of Mind text, “And it is a law that the man who sees what he wants to see, regardless of what appears, will someday experience the outer what he has so faithfully seen in the within. From selfish reasons alone, if for no loftier reason, we cannot afford to find fault, to hate or to hold in mind anything against any living soul.”
I was thinking about the loners who were in my classrooms when I was a teacher. I know that even twenty-five or thirty years ago, I taught teens who romanticized killing. One boy used to write in his journal about it. He usually drew horrendous pictures to illustrate the massacres. He was a boy who was very hard to like. He made fun of everyone unlike himself.
And yes, I think he had been mocked. He didn’t have any friends. I am fairly certain that he did not have close relationships with his parents.
How the Mock Turtle became an imitation of himself and “no longer a real turtle” we can only speculate.
But the time for silence has long passed. It is time to speak up for the ones who don’t fit in. Be the one to make a difference.
