{"id":378,"date":"2019-05-25T19:08:38","date_gmt":"2019-05-25T18:08:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johndavies.org\/wp\/2019\/05\/25\/johns-notes-a-world-of-strange-imaginings\/"},"modified":"2025-09-16T15:21:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-16T14:21:09","slug":"johns-notes-a-world-of-strange-imaginings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johndavies.org\/wp\/2019\/05\/25\/johns-notes-a-world-of-strange-imaginings\/","title":{"rendered":"A world of strange imaginings"},"content":{"rendered":"

John\u2019s Notes: Parish Newsletter editorials<\/strong><\/p>\n

May 2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

The Queen said to Alice, \u2018I\u2019ll give you something to believe. I\u2019m just one hundred and one, five months and a day.\u2019 \u2018I can\u2019t believe that!\u2019 said Alice.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I remember once visiting a nursing home where in the lounge an aged lady beckoned me over to her, drew my ear close to her mouth and said to me secretively but proudly, \u201cI\u2019m a hundred and ninety years old, you know.\u201d \u201cAre you really?\u201d I said, playing along. \u201cYou look good for your age.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAnd something else,\u201d the one-hundred-and-ninety-year-old said to me. \u201cYes?\u201d \u201cI\u2019m going to give you a donation of a hundred thousand pounds.\u201d \u201cReally?\u201d I replied, \u201cThat\u2019s very generous of you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cI can\u2019t believe THAT!\u201d said Alice.<\/em><\/p>\n

Can\u2019t you?\u201d said the Queen in a pitying tone. \u201cTry again: draw a long breath, and shut your eyes.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Alice laughed. \u201cThere\u2019s no use trying,\u201d she said, \u201cone can\u2019t believe impossible things.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

I daresay you haven\u2019t had much practice,\u201d said the Queen. \u201cWhen I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why sometimes I believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

These days – particularly if we\u2019re in the habit of starting our day with the news – it seems we\u2019re all required to believe six impossible things before breakfast, as mediated to us by tweeting politicians, pay-rolled pundits and \u2018reality\u2019 TV stars. In such a slippery world it\u2019s challenging keeping hold of those beliefs we hold dear, those truths we hold self-evident. And yet, though this may sound nonsensical, one of the best ways to do this is to permit ourselves to engage in strange imaginings.<\/p>\n

The Judaeo-Christian scriptures invite us to imagine ourselves in a world where, for instance, swords are reinvented as ploughshares, spears as pruning-hooks. And amongst those who have decided to make this their reality are people like Alfie Bradley, an artist who created the 27ft (8m) \u2018Knife Angel\u2019 sculpture currently on display at Coventry Cathedral, made from 100,000 blades handed into police across the country. And Alison Cope, who, in the five years since her18-year-old son Joshua was stabbed to death, has since spoken to over 280,000 people in schools, prisons and groups across the country, inviting her audiences to imagine a world without knife crime, and by imagining it, to bring it into being.<\/p>\n

During the weekend of the Austwick Street Market this year, Austwick Church is hosting a special Alice in Wonderland themed flower festival. On the Sunday morning we're having a special Alice-themed celebration service. Why not? It\u2019s only by allowing ourselves into a world of strange imaginings that we can start to make seemingly impossible things come wonderfully true.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John\u2019s Notes: Parish Newsletter editorials May 2019 The Queen said to Alice, \u2018I\u2019ll give you something to believe. I\u2019m just one hundred and one, five months and a day.\u2019 \u2018I can\u2019t believe that!\u2019 said Alice. I remember once visiting a nursing home where in the lounge an aged lady beckoned me over to her, drew … Continue reading “A world of strange imaginings”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johndavies.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johndavies.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johndavies.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johndavies.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johndavies.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/johndavies.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1391,"href":"https:\/\/johndavies.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378\/revisions\/1391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johndavies.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johndavies.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johndavies.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}