Listen to Metaphor
Silent and listen are anagrams. Not only do they use the same letters, they work together, too. We need to be silent to listen.
“Listening is the part of prayer that’s most neglected,” said Eugene Peterson in an interview I recently listened to. He spoke of poetry in the Bible, especially in the Psalms, and the remarkable use of metaphor which “both means what it says and what it doesn’t say. Those two things come together and it creates an imagination which is active. You’re not trying to figure things out; you’re trying to enter into what is there.”
So I perused the five Psalms for this week, looking for metaphors. In Psalm 81 we read that we will be fed honey from a rock. In Psalm 84 it says, “in whose heart are the highways to Zion.” And “righteousness and peace kiss each other” in Psalm 85. The imagination kicks in to picture these things.
Peterson memorized Psalm 92, the Sabbath Psalm, and then recited it every Sunday as part of his prayer for that day. He memorized seven psalms, one for each day of the week. Then as he was silent in prayer, the words of that psalm informed his listening. “Psalm 18 is a psalm just filled with metaphor and you are overwhelmed with all the ways you can reimagine God working in your life.”
I’ve read books on prayer over the years, heard sermons, done Bible studies. But my prayer life feels stagnant right now. (Stagnant. Metaphor. Picturing a small pond, brackish water, pond scum floating on top, sunlight not getting through, death and decay below. Needs stirring.)
I listened to the interview because of my interest in poetry. But it’s turning my attention to prayer. What seven psalms would I choose for the week? Psalm 84 could be a Sunday psalm. How I envy that sparrow, gliding through the temple courts, nesting near the altar, brooding silently on her eggs, watching the lambs and goats, grain offerings, fire, smoke wafting up into the blue sky. Promises enacted day after day. Why should prayer be hard, O my soul? Consider the sparrow. Be silent and listen. Then sing out to Creator-God of his marvelous works.
Cupped hands holding a small bird
~after a drawing by Emma Bukovietski (above)
It started with the first solid gray line
a horizon marking a beginning
then others darker, lighter
depending on the pressure
and angle of the graphite
some lines curved, shaded,
cross hatched.
The Creator drew the form
that he would inhabit — a vessel to hold
the coursing blood, the mind, the soul
just as hands cradle a nestling
its beak as distinctive
as a number two pencil
pointing into the world.
When feathers fledged he flew
swift and straight as a polished arrow.
Photo by Mateo Abrahan on Unsplash