metaphors, myths and merry go rounds

nothing gets our attention like a good storm.

God often uses symbols and metaphors- things like storms and floods and such- to communicate with people. The problem with speaking in metaphors and symbols is that people don’t always get them right away… and yet, if God were to come out shooting straight with humankind, one of two things might happen:

a) heads explode while bodies are consumed by holy fire.
b) people would simply get used to God
(perhaps this familiarity is what caused the rebellion back in Eden)

see, God knows his created well enough to know that he must temper his revelation, lest we become so familiar with the stuff of the mysteries of God that God’s presence and revelation no longer matter to us… they become the feeling of life and are dismissed in the same way that clean air, fresh water and savory food no longer cause us to pause and be thankful..

in the regular things, we regularly fail to grasp the deeper meaning. we miss the poetry of God. falling back upon our need for literal meanings and empirical reasoning.

but nothing gets our attention like a good storm.

my son tells a story of a kid that he went to school with in the early grades. his name was leroy.

leroy was a thrill seeker and was prone to try anything, especially if there was sufficient adrenaline rush involved. as a ten-year old, he had already discovered the correlation between personal danger and social esteem, and had become somewhat of a folk hero among the fifth graders. however, his greatest feat was still ahead of him...

until the day of the big storm when leroy's social status was elevated from folk hero to local legend.

it was a beautiful, sunny saskatchewan day in the late spring. however, as is true of most beautiful sunny saskatchewan days in late spring, the wind picked and and started to take over everything. as clouds began to gather and darken and the ubiquitous wind rose to sculpt them in real time, everyone on the playground was running for shelter and safety. leroy, however, turned and ran right back through the wind to the dustiest spot on the playground.

where he ran in circles.

faster and faster he ran, kicking up a tremendous amount of dust until he was barely visible at all to his schoolmates, all watching the spectacle from safely inside the building.

but amidst the dust and the wind and the circular run, something strange began to happen...

now years later, the kids, all much older and more sophisticated, reflect upon the scientific possibility of it all and the realization that some stories do grow in the telling. however, on that day and for a long time afterward, the only fitting assessment of what they had all witnessed was that

that was the day that leroy started the tornado.

seeing something happening and participating in it
rather than fleeing from it…

what if one were able to measure the movement of the wind and build a merry go round right at the centre of where a storm were to touch down? what a ride that would be!
hmm...

Q: what do we do when we hear that God is moving?
A: head for the storm cellar?
A: go out and play in it- embracing it and being embraced by it, participating in the stories of God that people will tell for decades, maybe even centuries…?

window weather: this is another sunny day,
but i can't help noticing that the wind is picking up...

*youtube convergence credits: visuals from the wizard of oz and audio from great gig in the sky (pink floyd)... speaking of playing with serendipity, if you watch wizard of oz, having cued pink floyd's dark side of the moon cd on the third roar of the MGM lion at the beginning, you will experience one of the most interesting aesthetic coincedences ever discovered...