Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Tea Party) animated by Walt Disney in 1951

Link to Why Some People Don't go to Church Top Reason #4

Reason #3:
WE WANT TO TALK TO OTHER PEOPLE.

Knowing and loving someone totally different than ourselves with the passion anthropologists dissect "the other", is one of the true nectars of life.

Unfortunately, the meeting and the greeting of new people is one of the greatest sovereign rights of humanity, we take advantage of the least.

Too often regarded as an airy fairy aspiration, the path to self-realization begins in the eyes of another, but once embarked upon, and one sees all that can be gleaned from that perspective, the train needs to pull out of the station onto another destination. 

Our deepest, most meaningful relationships will, of course, be with those we find a lifetime of joyful experiences to share.  This is different than being tied to someone or an idea  like an albatross around the neck.  Relationships that feed our soul can be committal or noncommittal.

For instance, Alice, in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland doesn't know the rabbit in any formal sense.  What she knows is that he knows his way to and through where she wants to go.   Like many people we meet along our own life's path, the rabbit is more than willing to help Alice through the maze as long as she wishes to participate in the antics of his life on his terms.

Yakity Yak, Don't Talk Back

Churches, corporations, cliques, clubs, crews, clans and conferences reaffirm the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, and provide new avenues of further committing one's self to the group narrative.

The only problem with this approach to self-discovery is that it is too crowded.  

How can one, in earnest, develop their own relationship with the world when the relationship with the self has been circumvented by an external agenda?

Like Alice, we need only remember: We Choose Our Own Experience.

The Queen of Hearts represents expert marketers, overbearing caretakers, and master storytellers everywhere who weave catatonic webs of reason insisting one submit to group-think ordained by them, or "off with your heads"! 

The slippery slope of people-pleasing and fickle acceptance is only masterfully walked by the most devout practitioners of the advertised message.

Down the Rabbit Hole

The discovery of one's self is not always encumbered by such ominous circumstances.  As Alice discovers in Wonderland, going down the rabbit hole is just as necessary for those of us lulled into boredom by routine as it is for anyone else.

Many people who do not go to church realize finding balance between seeing one's self through the lens of "the other" and constructing one's own daily narrative is essential to any good relationship.  As we grow and experience life, we learn by asking questions.  Asking the right people the right question is imperative to gleaning a life story full of real meaning to us.

More often than not, the confines of a one church, corporation, clique, club, crew, clan, conference, or any other crowd simply cannot sustain our need for continuous real-time growth.  

We enjoy meeting new, strange and exciting people we have little in common with, and with whom we disagree because we want to know the back story of their belief.  We want to question our own assumptions and to allow our egos be proven wrong because it makes us wise. 

We know we must find a way to join that which divides us within before we can find a way to join the world to efficiently manage and steward our natural and intellectual resources.

John Kay of the Financial Times recently wrote:  The anonymity of markets delights the political right, which welcomes it as a check on state authority, just as it infuriates the political left, which deplores the freedom of the market from democratic control.

How do we check the control if we don't know how to talk to one another?  Where do we learn to do so: churches, corporations, cliques, clubs, crews, clans and conferences?  Maybe, but remember Alice's adventure down the rabbit hole and the greater appreciation for her humdrum existence it gave her.

Ask: Am I learning everything I need to know to be useful to myself and others?  Is the path I am committed to helping me to integrate this experience into something meaningful for my life and other people?  And, most of all ask yourself "Am I having fun yet"?

Who knows that new person you meet down the rabbit hole may be you.

Thank you for reading & BE Blessed!

Reason #10: We Want to Learn to See the Future
Reason   #9: We want to love our physical bodies and be spiritual
Reason   #8: We Want to See God
Reason   #7: Fire and Brimstone is for Kids
Reason   #6: We Are More Than a Pretty Face in a Pew

Reason   #5: We've Got The Whole World in Our Hands

Reason   #4: What We Have Here is a Failure to Communicate

Reason   #3: We Want to Talk to Other People