Metaphor and Creation

A lot of the time when I want to describe something, I feel a struggle to accurately transcribe what is in my mind to another person. I think and feel in images and experiences.

I used to feel a lot of shame in the way that I wasn’t able to clearly articulate what I am feeling/thinking. There is a gift in someone being able to clearly and concisely communicate a thought or idea. To do that feels like needing to shove an entire piece of bread into a drinking straw. I think I often get caught up in all the “waste” or what gets discarded. Words feel a lot like code. “1’s and 0’s” to encode a wonderfully complex thing like an apple that passing a real life example to handle is so much richer of an experience.

It gets more complex when it’s the memory of THAT apple, a particular moment in time that I would want to share. Then not only the complexities of taste, shape, sight, sound as crunch, feel in hand, pressure of skin and such, but to also add in the story of how the experience happened.

So words to me are always so small in comparison to what they are trying to describe.

Which is why I wonder if God gave us Creation.

Like an art gallery, creation puts God’s method and work on display. We can walk though the pieces of work to try and interpret what we see, draw meaning form what we witness, orient ourselves to how we respond to it and expand our awareness to how things can be viewed from a different perspective. Creation functions as God’s design and in it is a vehicle that we can try to understand Him.

In the Bible God is described as various word pictures. His kingdom given analogies like, “still waters”. Metaphor may be a way that we can approximate the big ideas that God wants us to understand.

Maybe what makes metaphor so difficult is that it’s easily seen from an angle the originator didn’t intend. It becomes easy to attack without a personal connection. If God is a rock… do you mean he is this pebble or do you mean He is the boulder that you are holding onto for dear life as you scramble up the side of the mountain pass?

For a lot of my life I didn’t share my thoughts about God and the way life worked because I felt like I didn’t have the words. I had an ex that for the first time demanded I describe myself and I valiantly tried to put the images and feelings I knew to be true into words. Each metaphor was a possibility I was trying to put forth. Like a place of starting where we could begin to swap connections and similarities together. Each attempt was mine to connect us, so we could come together and explore the truth of who God was together. If I experience God when I am wrestling a difficult concept, how does that relate to your experiences wresting and how does that relate to the stories in the Bible? Every metaphor invites someone to stand on your side of the glass and look at subject together. In essence, a metaphor invites someone who hears it to a sense of intimacy.

That relationship didn’t work out. We could never figure out how to communicate with one another because I wanted connection and intimacy through the conversation and I felt he wanted information needed to sort me into acceptable thinking vs unacceptable. In humor once we realized that I was the alien race in Star Trek that used stories as ways of communicating (Damak and Gilad at Tanagra) and he was closer to how the Vulcans preferred to communicate. It was frustrating on both ends.

In a lot of ways the sensation brought to mind a small child, who painted a picture to show her parents, only to have the parent respond, “good, but what purpose does that have? How much do you think it can sell for?” Rather than delight in the act of creation, the intention is to find how it is useful to the viewer, rather than how it impacted the creator.

Another image it brought up is how people seldom listen to fully comprehend the other person, but rather listen with the intent to respond or decide what they will do next. I’m often the person who will even interrupt rather than listen fully for someone. It’s almost as if it’s too intimate for me to allow that person to impact me. It’s only been in the past few years as I’ve experienced how transformative it is to have someone sit with me through a thought process and emotion… that I’ve been able to see the gift of that and want to extend it to others. Perhaps it’s why the order of the blessings is such. God blesses those so they may bless others. You cannot give others what you may not have received yourself.

So metaphors are a way to play with concepts. Abstract ways to connect listeners to speakers and create a sense of intimacy over the subject and experience of connecting.

Unlike the child who is looking to the parents to give her delight and validation of her experience… God does not need our validation to continue to put creation forward. Creation simply exists. It’s existence is unchanging and offers the same invitation from God at all times, “come find Me in what you are experiencing.” When you find God in a moment, I feel He smiles and we get to enjoy each other.

The awesomeness of the mountain slope. How the snow covers everything but makes the plants and insects sabbath, but later when it melts provides life. How the stars are so numerous when we look up, but the sheer number of atoms inside of one drop of water is just as numerous. How God is always resurrecting spaces that previously have died: fire areas, volcano eruptions and avalanches… How in the wilderness we can notice the big or the small and all of it is there for us to experience.

Since that relationship I’ve learned how important metaphors are to me. If playing with metaphors isn’t your thing… it may be hard to enjoy speaking and dreaming of possibilities with me. I used to feel it was impossible to find people who would want to listen to me, let alone enjoy talking to me about ideas/faith. Now, I’ve made friends that delight and enjoy contemplating the different ways we can find God and describe Him in the everyday! The shame of not being able to accurately described something in words has lessened. Instead I shift my focus to the purpose of a metaphor… it’s to connect. Metaphors connect us to one another through a shared experience, connect us to larger concepts, connect us to the ultimate story and finally to connect us to a loving God who desires to spend time with us.