Micah 6:8
“God has told you people what is good–
and what the Lord requires of you:
do justice, love mercy,
and walk humbly with your God.”
…
One third of the Jewish Bible
is in poetry:
all the prophets, all the proverbs,
Job and all the Psalms.
Fables, sagas, metaphors–we
take it literally?
No, its truth is deeper, wider
than the sea. Our souls
leap or cry, our hearts sing or sigh.
…
We are called to act by holy
words in parallel:
every idea is repeated–
image, example,
contrast…thick heads hit again and
yet again. As sheep
we need a good shepherd or we
stray. For us to keep
ten commandments we need poetry.
– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, March 4, 2013
Thanks for this Steve, I’m reminded of a comment by communication theorist Marshall McLuhan (medium is the massage, aka, “message”) when he says the Greek or Latin meaning of the word “read” is ‘to guess”. “Protestant literalism” makes us forget that everything is poetry including prose.
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YES. I guess all the time, and you, Gary, and you, Steve, always keep me guessing. My thick head needs it and loves it when Something breaks through.
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