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Reflection for Date October 22, 2006

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In today's Gospel Jesus asks his disciples whether they can "drink the cup that I will drink". Obviously he's not speaking of an actual cup but of the suffering he will undergo, which he describes metaphorically as a bitter draft, something they will find hard to swallow. Metaphors are used frequently in the Bible and poetry and everyday discourse. Why? Because to make ourselves better understood we human beings like to make comparisons. For instance, what's the point of my telling you I've had a head cold all week when I can better evoke some sympathy by saying "I've had a hell of a head cold all week"? That's what metaphors and similes do: enhance the listener's experience of what one is trying to describe.

And so when Edgar Alan Poe wants to tell Helen how she affects him, he will say, Helen, thy beauty is to me / Like those Nicean barks of yore / That gently, o'er a perfumed Sea / The weary way-worn traveler bore / To his own native shore. Or listen to how John Keats mourns the death of a friend: As from the darkening gloom a silver dove / Upsoars . . . / On pinions that naught moves but pure delight, / So fled thy soul into the realms above, / Regions of peace and everlasting love. Does that enhance your sense of that person's death? It does mine. Or listen to how Walt Whitman speaks (in metaphor) of Lincoln's assassination: O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done, / The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won, / . . . But O heart! heart! heart! / O the bleeding drops of red, / Where on the deck my Captain lies, / Fallen cold and dead. Whitman's poetic appreciation of that tragedy so impacted the nation that children recited that poem for generations afterwards. And what about Scripture itself where the Psalmist enhances our sense of God's nature by saying: The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

I mention all this because recently a friend sent me a list of (facetiously) prize-winning metaphors used in student essays nationally last year - selected by teachers. Here are a few:
ü His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.
ü The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated . . . came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge free ATM machine.
ü From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 P.M. instead of 7:30.
ü He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant and she was the East River.
ü He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame.
What does this say about the range of comparison available in this day and age? Nature, which is so powerful a source for comparisons, seems lost in an age dominated by ATM machines, dryers, TV shows and gangster movies! In some cases the students found even using metaphors a hard stretch - and more or less gave up, as in:
ü Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
ü He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.
ü Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.
ü The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.

So you want to know why religion, prayer, hymns and literature (which are loaded with sublime metaphor) are needed today? Look at what we'd be reduced to without them. But I must say I really liked one student's metaphor, who wrote: The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.

-- Geoff Wood