Alice got left out of this past Sunday’s sermon, an unfortunate casualty of the cutting room but one that ultimately resulted in a more cohesive sermon. But that omission drives me to include some ruminations that are not likely to fit anywhere else.
Most of us are familiar with the Cheshire Cat’s famous line: “We’re all mad here.” But most of us — more conscious of movies than the books — are probably unaware of the context of that statement and of just how significant it is for Alice’s journey of discovering who she is.
The famous statement comes as the Cheshire Cat is giving directions to Alice and tells her that she can visit either the Hatter in one direction or the March Hare in the other direction, but it doesn’t really matter as “they’re both mad.”
She retorts: “But I don’t want to go among mad people.”
To which the Cat replies: “Oh, you can’t help that. We’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”
Alice disagrees with the Cat, and after a brief attempt to defend herself she asks “And how do you know that you’re mad?”
And here’s what happens:
“To begin with,” said the Cat, “a dog’s not mad. You grant that?
“I suppose so,” said Alice.
“Well, then,” the Cat went on, “you see, a dog growls when it’s angry and wags its tail when it’s pleased. Now I growl when I’m pleased, and wag my tail when I’m angry. Therefore I’m mad.”
“I call it purring, now growling,” said Alice.
“Call it what you like,” said the Cat.
Here ends the lesson.
So, according to the Cheshire Cat, nothing in Wonderland is as expected (it’s all kind of upside down and backwards) and that makes it “mad”…… or maybe we might instead say it seems absurd or “foolish”? But notice, too, the Cat’s quick reprimand of Alice’s attempt to pretend that changing the language changes the underlying reality. A growl does not become a purr simply by rebranding, and it is the Cat and not the girl who would know the difference.
In fact, the entire next chapter is a continuation of this theme. At the “mad tea party” Alice is challenged over and over again for her attempt to alter the words used by the other Wonderland creatures to fit her expectations. But this is not the way words work. Words have meaning and cannot be moved about willy nilly and expect them to mean whatever you want them to mean. Shakespeare offered that a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet. Lewis Carroll’s version of that adage would be far more earthy and considerably more repugnant.
To quote a long-dead Jewish revolutionary that was murdered by a state official who claimed truth was malleable: “If you have ears to hear, then hear!”
Pastor Michael