How do you describe a tree
To a blind man?
What do the words tall
Green or branch signify?
How do you meaningfully distinguish
Between shade and broad sunlight
Between dappled rays and black of night?
“Take a thin bit of your darkness
And then imagine other bits
Of darkness coming off to left and right
With still other bits of darkness
Of a slightly different shade
Sprouting off or hanging
Pendant from those first bits and
Waving about
No, fluttering
No, just hanging”
Words fail us.
As well say
A tree is a noun
Festooned with other nouns
That verb adverbly
In vibrant shades of adjective.
Article is nice, aren’t they?
And what does sight mean
To a man born blind?
Verbal gymnastics become so much chaff
Useless scales to be laid aside.
Men are not trees,
Nor like trees, but moving about.
When you have finally seen a man
Or a tree you know it.
The Kingdom of God is not a metaphor
Nor like a simile.
Should we bow and scrape to an analogy?
As well say
The Kingdom of God is
A thin bit of your darkness
Verbed with vibrant nouns of adjective
This is the silence of darkness
The solo voice of your empty friend
Harmonizing with the melody of the Liar
When you finally see the light, you will know it
Peter is highly intrigued by the healing of the blind man, and the progressive return of his sight.
See Psalm 88:18 and 92:3.
We are all too often seduced by our own limited understanding of the Kingdom, and getting in pissing contests, as it were, over whose deficient vision is “better” than the other’s… when all will pale in the Presence of true insight. How much better to embrace the value of every tale or doctrine or metaphor or parable, however imperfect, that increases our understanding of God?