Wrapping Round

EVER CATCH HOLD OF THE edge of a metaphor that no amount of teasing will out?

That’s why I call the blog “The Metaphorager” in fact: I sometimes feel like Newton’s beachcomber looking for the one bit of sea-wrack which will reflect the whole in some previously unseen and unillumined way. And on this sunny morning in Sonoma, that would be the brawnshouldered road crew about to plumb our street for waterpipe repairs. The pipes provide and conceal a transparent service; like the paint on a wall invisibly thick with wires, joists, nails, sawn trees and whatever smashed-thumb swearing filled the builder’s moment. Unseen — but take them away …

We walk within, upon and under miracles and mysteries; it is no less a miracle that our tools uncover mysteries than it is mysterious that our miracles resemble our tools. Is it any wonder that our first fumblings toward God recall our reaching up from the crib? We are looking and reaching toward a future vision of our own perfection, and if we now say “God” instead of “Gah” it’s only because we’ve learned the sometime value of silence. Perhaps tomorrow we won’t say anything at all; maybe through leaving nothing undone.

Those workers certainly aren’t. I hope they don’t scare the cat.

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