What can we hold–soft, gentle, suggestive, beckoning?

When we finally give up the old images for God—puppet master, old man on a throne, far away clockmaker—when we let go of one monkey bar and the next one in front of us dissolves into the air, to what can we hold? Some half images have come to me; I invite you to share what images speak to you. Like the itinerant preacher telling many parables to say what the Queendom is like, we perhaps need many and malleable near images.

The source of a great river: dew collecting someplace high in the mountains, in lots of places, not just one: God is all over, is gentle and imperceptible, yet crushes and moves granite, responds, accepts, feeds all.

The wind: all around, not seen but felt.

A garden, the whole of it: the sun, the rains, the soil, the seeds, the gardener, the wind, the heat, the warmth of the bed, the working of it together to nurture and grow and live.

A tree: the leaves which green and grow and pull the tree outward and upward to its limit, then die, then resurrect themselves as food and soil for the next generating; the sap of life which flows and fills the whole with life.

Humans: who find new ways to make mistakes and new ways to come together.

A butterfly: unnoticed most of the time, but present as beauty and grace and working, working to make our yards healthy.

Let us notice near-metaphors of the just before dawn variety: soft, gentle, suggestive, with beckoning edges.

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on August 1st, 2010 | No Comments »

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