Taste and See
I love the imagery of the bible…it has so much texture and depth and can evoke such strong emotions or reactions. But then I love words used well, and the bible is full of beautiful words…be they stark, or compassionate, or anguished or joy filled…the words of the bible are full of words that are pregnant with meaning. Whenever I see a sunset that has this tangerine color it almost makes my mouth water. I’ve seen some pretty stunning sunsets living in the prairie and all, but this color is my favorite because it looks like a tangerine, or a peach just waiting to be tasted. And it often brings to mind the verse in Psalm 34:8
An education course that I took, back in the day, opened my eyes to the power of representative language and how a good metaphor could make or break a piece of writing. I had been through high school English courses and University English courses (in fact English was my minor) and never had anyone taught something so, well, elementary in many, many years of school. And the prof was a real arrogant sort who blustered and waved his arms about. And in very disdainful and contemptuous tones tried to teach a bunch of university students about writing. I already had my degree and was back to work on a post-bac and was less than impressed with his approach. Which was really too bad, as sometimes your delivery can really get in the way of your message…and we’re all familiar with those sorts of scenarios. I remember him exclaiming that a piece of writing without metaphor (similes were apparently not as essential) was like eating cardboard and that every piece of writing (I guess that includes parking tickets lol) needed metaphor to effectively reach a reader. Now, I wasn’t averse to metaphor, I did, after all, like poetry….which is chock full of imagery. But to push this so hard seemed a little obsessive. Well, anyway, each of us had to produce a portfolio of writing (and of course, we all knew we had better include a lot of metaphor) and so I set about writing poetry, short stories and a few other things and along the way started noticing metaphor in the language around me…no big surprise as I’m sure you know how when you buy a new red car (for example) suddenly you’re amazed at how many red cars there are on the road. Or if you’re expecting a baby you suddenly realize how very many other people are growing babies as well…it’s just a human quirk. Anyway, I was reading my bible one day, in the Old Testament, I started to notice all the imagery and was amazed at how much the language brought power to the message, brought emotion, brought understanding. I have never read the bible in quite the same way…that was a real gift. And this awareness comes up all the time…even in my thoughts as I look at the sunset and think that the color is so delicious I can almost taste it. And if you go back and read this post you’ll see many, many metaphors that I didn’t plan or try to embed…they’re just part of being human…to look at life through comparison…to think about how this is like that and that makes it fuller, deeper, gives more texture. When you read and look for metaphor you’ll be amazed at how many metaphors are within the text. When you do that though it can get downright distracting, and sometimes it’s best just to let language affect you at a deeper level…especially poetry, story, and lyrics. And don’t you think that how our minds work, how we use language, how we craft our writing is what makes reading the bible possible at all…makes faith possible…without the ability to use language in this way we really would be unable to appreciate the world as richly as we do.
Great shots.