Stop and Think

Back to School…

            The Mock Turtle went on.

            ‘We had the best of educations – in fact, we went to school every day’…

            ‘And how many hours a day did you do lessons?’ said Alice…

            ‘Ten hours the first day,’ said the Mock Turtle: ‘nine the next, and so on,’

            ‘What a curious plan!’ exclaimed Alice.

            ‘That’s the reason they’re called lessons,’ the Gryphon remarked: ‘because       they lessen from day to day.’

Welcome back to school.  And to ‘Stop and Think’.  I do hope that everyone found some time to ‘simply mess about’ during the summer holidays.

You can find Alice’s encounter with the Mock Turtle and the Gryphon in Chapter Nine of ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’.  Alice was puzzled by the strange way in which the Mock Turtle’s school was organised.   That’s a good reminder to those of us who are familiar with ‘how things happen’ at our school, or our place of work, or wherever we happen to be, that there will be others for whom everything is new and strange.   Here is an opportunity for everyone to make those who are ‘new’ to feel welcome and to settle into new ways of doing things and new routines.  And what is true at school applies equally when we encounter someone new at our church, at our place of work, in the local shops… 

The beginning of a New Term at the beginning of a New School Year is full of opportunities for each one of us to discover something new and challenging and exciting…

Alice was challenged to think about what she had heard about the Mock Turtle’s School.

            This was quite a new idea to Alice, and she thought it over before she made her next remark.   ‘Then the eleventh day must have been….’

What was the eleventh day, do you think?  Read the story and find out!

Every blessing,

Rev Bill