I understand. I appreciated your thoughts on parables. And next time I will be clear I am citing you, to be sure. While I have you, what do you think of the idea of the parable as a verbal hand grenade that Jesus launches into the unsuspecting crowd? I've been using that illustration for a couple decades now, complete with the visual of me lobbing my pretend hand grenade into the congregation ;-) . . .
I don't mind being quoted back to myself -- 😁 -- citation is so important to authors. And when one's words get disconnected from a name, then all sorts of shenanigans can happen.
In response to the below, I offer up parables as verbal hand grenades, whose frequent parabolic trajectory after all matches another English word we have from the greek para+ballei. "Hey, what's this being tossed in our midst?" . . . BOOM!
“Parable” comes from two Greek terms, para, meaning “to come alongside,” and ballein, meaning “to throw,” and is itself a paradoxical word. A parable is intended to be a story that comes alongside our regular understanding and, frankly, upsets it. It uses ordinary things to draw us to extraordinary ones and crafts understanding using the seen to explain the unseen.
In effect, the parables are Jesus coming alongside us and ripping off our cozy theological comforters. Parables should leave us gasping, out in the doctrinal cold, and shaking with anger, awe, or surprise. Nothing is as we thought. The whole point of a parable is to disturb, disrupt, and perplex us, shaking up what we believe to be true, all without providing an easy answer or simple moral to fall back upon.
Parables are my favorite part of the Bible. We so often domesticate them. A friend once told me "Jesus is always hiding somewhere in the parables." When I asked him where Jesus was in the Prodigal Son he said "Jesus was the fatted calf." So I always look for Jesus. One of my favorite parables is the one about the guest to the wedding banquet- the one with the fellow who doesn't have a wedding garment. "How did you get in here without a wedding garment?" asks the party manager. "And he was speechless." just like Jesus was speechless before Pilate. So I think Jesus was the one without the proper garment, just like he was on the cross. "And he was cast out." Just like Jesus was.
The “bad fish” parable sent me into an understanding of the alchemical fires of transformation and transmutation. It may seem that “the kingdom of heaven is like...” condemnation to burn in hell, exile but that’s not what the kingdom of grace is like. “Neither do I condemn Thee” and the little boy who said “he loved both.” It’s purification that occurs when we burn, a refining fire of love that transforms whatever it unlike itself “bad.” Heaven is like all Is Goodness without an opposite. The flour and yeast combine and bread is all leavened; the mustard seed grows to great size; the mountain moves out of the way; treasures are hidden and unearthed when we dig deep; the Pearl of great price is worth everything one has accumulated in the world.
Very happy to allow heaven to reveal in ways that disturb the status quo. It is both beautifully refined as well as wild and free. My kingdom is not of this world. Sorry folks. We don’t get to live “under that comforter” of the known. It upends the conditioned identified mind that has grown accustomed to ruling the roost.
Still today the “bad guys” live to call out the blasphemer still not getting their projection of their own blasphemy. Crucifixion via social media. “Judge not ...” yet Love will take them into its compassionate fires at some point. Humility comes to call. Our saving Grace and redemption lies within every instant, in simple moments.
And when we are laid to rest in green pastures beside still waters all these troubles are laid to rest too, in This that rights it all from Wherein there is no wrong. This too is what heaven, that Is within us, is like.
Wonder, awe, joy, splendor escaping in wild inflorescences of creative imagination putting the wordless Word into words to be fleshed out in our daily living.
Thanks for this. If there’s been a preacher like you in the churches I used to attend, well, my disillusionment wouldn’t have led me Home Here Heaven/Earth same. May the world be blessed by your words & work. 🙏👏✌️🫶
Thank you for the wonderful inspirations at the end of your post. Those I often copy into a running inspiration list. When I'm sitting at the computer bored and clicking, inspiration helps to stop and center me.
I was introduced to you by Liz McCarthy and can't stop reading every word you send! I don't call myself "Christian" but your perspective makes so much sense! Thank you, and thanks to Liz! Lynne Slasor
Like fairy tales and fables, I've always seen parables as s, I've always looked at/seen parables as ways to present ah-ha moments. Ironically, I think in the Western world, all have only been seen as teachable moments for kids and hence watered down versions of their original tales/message. And, as a follow up to that statement, get a copy of the Grimm's original book of fairy tales, published in
the 1810. Talk about grim tales!!!! Be Well, Eileen
Dear Diana, what an awful experience-- to be the target of a twitter swarm. Though it is vital to get out new discussions of parables (such discussions have changed my life), best stay off of twitter with thinking that stirs up the hornets, as you may have concluded yourself. The thing is, Twitter is not a forum-and-news venue where everyone retains their identity as a civil American—It is effectively a bunker from which trolls, or now, grunts in a culture army, can lob grenades at civil leaders anonymously. They can’t hide nearly as effectively in the face-to-face public sphere.
But we know this ugly problem isn’t confined to twitter and isn’t confined to online venues. We progressives need help, and I hope sociologists and progressive movement people are working on it.
In the meantime, we each gotta keep doing what we can, in whatever helpful area our individual work leads us. For myself, I’ve just birthed a book, "The River Beyond the Dam: Shooting the Rapids of Progressive Christianity," to soften attitudes and produce “aha!” moments fostering appreciation of progressive Christianity by Christians and non-Christians alike (and validate those who are troubled, especially women and LGBTQ folks). I’m working via memoir and concrete, on-the-ground lived experience to try to get beneath the national-level noise.
Early readers have responded enthusiastically (and with those “ahas!” I aimed for). But I will need to snag reviewers with a platform, a a megaphone, who can really move The River along.
Diana and The Cottage subscribers: Can you help? Do you know a reviewer you could recommend to me, who might be amenable to receiving a publicity kit and a review copy?
Thank you, And as my pastor, Sharon, has said, we don't stop . . . And thank you to Charles James who said rightly just two hours ago here, that parables are better listened to than read on the page.
Thanks so much for your thought-provoking reflections, Diana!! I'm one of your new subscribers---have known about your work through Living the Questions DVDs but recently am very interested in your Christianity After Religion reboot. I am trying to sign up for the St. Simon's event but get a "we don't recognize that promo code" when I enter dbcottage24 in the field on the registration page. Can you help?
Ideally parable were meant to be heard, not read. When heard they arrested the thought world of the hearer, like a thunderclap and the imagination was unleashed. One side consequence of hearing... He told them still another parable (Matt. 13:33): “The kingdom of heaven (God) is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into about sixty pounds of flour until it worked all through the dough.”...is 'kingdom of heaven' and 'woman' is side by side in the same breath...woman is integral to the kingdom expansive realm...a joy to those in the audience who heard.
Thank you, Charles, for these thoughts. It was, indeed, by sitting listening to sermons that I was profoundly moved and encouraged by one parable after another over the years I was becoming a Christian again.
I like the idea of pondering beyond the “approved” answers to questions. We interpret in different ways as the Spirit leads and or own understanding changes as we mature. Sharing each other’s thoughts prompts us to reconsider and expand our own. Perhaps that was Jesus’ intent for parables.
I have one of those mustard seeds in a ball/globe. It belonged to my mother. She told me why she had it years ago but I cannot remember the story today. I found it in some of her things after she passed away. I decided to keep it. Not sure why, maybe I need to go back and look at that parable again
Thank you for this invitation to go wilding in our minds and hearts. It has been a long time since this mustard seed (pine nut in The Message) parable has reminded me of the glass charms with a mustard seed inside them. Girls wore them on their charm bracelets and on chains around their necks during the 50s, maybe into the 60s. I had a charm bracelet was not given a mustard seed glass ball/globe. I never asked for one. I do remember most who wore them knew the parable. A constant reminder of the kin-dom of God and how it begins in each of us and grows as we tell our stories of relationship, sit with one another in silence, listen to the other and be in the world in which we were placed to become part of the place where the weary and the hopeful may find a place of safety, warmth and love.
I understand. I appreciated your thoughts on parables. And next time I will be clear I am citing you, to be sure. While I have you, what do you think of the idea of the parable as a verbal hand grenade that Jesus launches into the unsuspecting crowd? I've been using that illustration for a couple decades now, complete with the visual of me lobbing my pretend hand grenade into the congregation ;-) . . .
God's grace and peace to you my sister in Christ!
I apologize, Diana.
I don't mind being quoted back to myself -- 😁 -- citation is so important to authors. And when one's words get disconnected from a name, then all sorts of shenanigans can happen.
In response to the below, I offer up parables as verbal hand grenades, whose frequent parabolic trajectory after all matches another English word we have from the greek para+ballei. "Hey, what's this being tossed in our midst?" . . . BOOM!
--------------------------------------------------------------
“Parable” comes from two Greek terms, para, meaning “to come alongside,” and ballein, meaning “to throw,” and is itself a paradoxical word. A parable is intended to be a story that comes alongside our regular understanding and, frankly, upsets it. It uses ordinary things to draw us to extraordinary ones and crafts understanding using the seen to explain the unseen.
In effect, the parables are Jesus coming alongside us and ripping off our cozy theological comforters. Parables should leave us gasping, out in the doctrinal cold, and shaking with anger, awe, or surprise. Nothing is as we thought. The whole point of a parable is to disturb, disrupt, and perplex us, shaking up what we believe to be true, all without providing an easy answer or simple moral to fall back upon.
I wrote that. "Freeing Jesus," page 45. (Please cite quotes properly! Especially on the internet.)
Parables are my favorite part of the Bible. We so often domesticate them. A friend once told me "Jesus is always hiding somewhere in the parables." When I asked him where Jesus was in the Prodigal Son he said "Jesus was the fatted calf." So I always look for Jesus. One of my favorite parables is the one about the guest to the wedding banquet- the one with the fellow who doesn't have a wedding garment. "How did you get in here without a wedding garment?" asks the party manager. "And he was speechless." just like Jesus was speechless before Pilate. So I think Jesus was the one without the proper garment, just like he was on the cross. "And he was cast out." Just like Jesus was.
This made me snort laughing: “when the rich are condemned, it is always a metaphor”. I see what you did there. 😎
The “bad fish” parable sent me into an understanding of the alchemical fires of transformation and transmutation. It may seem that “the kingdom of heaven is like...” condemnation to burn in hell, exile but that’s not what the kingdom of grace is like. “Neither do I condemn Thee” and the little boy who said “he loved both.” It’s purification that occurs when we burn, a refining fire of love that transforms whatever it unlike itself “bad.” Heaven is like all Is Goodness without an opposite. The flour and yeast combine and bread is all leavened; the mustard seed grows to great size; the mountain moves out of the way; treasures are hidden and unearthed when we dig deep; the Pearl of great price is worth everything one has accumulated in the world.
Very happy to allow heaven to reveal in ways that disturb the status quo. It is both beautifully refined as well as wild and free. My kingdom is not of this world. Sorry folks. We don’t get to live “under that comforter” of the known. It upends the conditioned identified mind that has grown accustomed to ruling the roost.
Still today the “bad guys” live to call out the blasphemer still not getting their projection of their own blasphemy. Crucifixion via social media. “Judge not ...” yet Love will take them into its compassionate fires at some point. Humility comes to call. Our saving Grace and redemption lies within every instant, in simple moments.
And when we are laid to rest in green pastures beside still waters all these troubles are laid to rest too, in This that rights it all from Wherein there is no wrong. This too is what heaven, that Is within us, is like.
Wonder, awe, joy, splendor escaping in wild inflorescences of creative imagination putting the wordless Word into words to be fleshed out in our daily living.
Thanks for this. If there’s been a preacher like you in the churches I used to attend, well, my disillusionment wouldn’t have led me Home Here Heaven/Earth same. May the world be blessed by your words & work. 🙏👏✌️🫶
❤️🔥♾️⛲️💞🌱🌸🍑🧉
Thanks for offering this.
Thank you for the wonderful inspirations at the end of your post. Those I often copy into a running inspiration list. When I'm sitting at the computer bored and clicking, inspiration helps to stop and center me.
I was introduced to you by Liz McCarthy and can't stop reading every word you send! I don't call myself "Christian" but your perspective makes so much sense! Thank you, and thanks to Liz! Lynne Slasor
"A parable is intended to be a story that comes alongside our regular understanding and, frankly, upsets it." I love this statement.
i.e. a generator or ah-ha moments!
Like fairy tales and fables, I've always seen parables as s, I've always looked at/seen parables as ways to present ah-ha moments. Ironically, I think in the Western world, all have only been seen as teachable moments for kids and hence watered down versions of their original tales/message. And, as a follow up to that statement, get a copy of the Grimm's original book of fairy tales, published in
the 1810. Talk about grim tales!!!! Be Well, Eileen
Tale
Get Well Soon!!! Although, if you wrote this while sick... I will be following. Praise the Lord 🥳
Dear Diana, what an awful experience-- to be the target of a twitter swarm. Though it is vital to get out new discussions of parables (such discussions have changed my life), best stay off of twitter with thinking that stirs up the hornets, as you may have concluded yourself. The thing is, Twitter is not a forum-and-news venue where everyone retains their identity as a civil American—It is effectively a bunker from which trolls, or now, grunts in a culture army, can lob grenades at civil leaders anonymously. They can’t hide nearly as effectively in the face-to-face public sphere.
But we know this ugly problem isn’t confined to twitter and isn’t confined to online venues. We progressives need help, and I hope sociologists and progressive movement people are working on it.
In the meantime, we each gotta keep doing what we can, in whatever helpful area our individual work leads us. For myself, I’ve just birthed a book, "The River Beyond the Dam: Shooting the Rapids of Progressive Christianity," to soften attitudes and produce “aha!” moments fostering appreciation of progressive Christianity by Christians and non-Christians alike (and validate those who are troubled, especially women and LGBTQ folks). I’m working via memoir and concrete, on-the-ground lived experience to try to get beneath the national-level noise.
Early readers have responded enthusiastically (and with those “ahas!” I aimed for). But I will need to snag reviewers with a platform, a a megaphone, who can really move The River along.
Diana and The Cottage subscribers: Can you help? Do you know a reviewer you could recommend to me, who might be amenable to receiving a publicity kit and a review copy?
Thank you, And as my pastor, Sharon, has said, we don't stop . . . And thank you to Charles James who said rightly just two hours ago here, that parables are better listened to than read on the page.
Thanks so much for your thought-provoking reflections, Diana!! I'm one of your new subscribers---have known about your work through Living the Questions DVDs but recently am very interested in your Christianity After Religion reboot. I am trying to sign up for the St. Simon's event but get a "we don't recognize that promo code" when I enter dbcottage24 in the field on the registration page. Can you help?
Ideally parable were meant to be heard, not read. When heard they arrested the thought world of the hearer, like a thunderclap and the imagination was unleashed. One side consequence of hearing... He told them still another parable (Matt. 13:33): “The kingdom of heaven (God) is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into about sixty pounds of flour until it worked all through the dough.”...is 'kingdom of heaven' and 'woman' is side by side in the same breath...woman is integral to the kingdom expansive realm...a joy to those in the audience who heard.
Thank you, Charles, for these thoughts. It was, indeed, by sitting listening to sermons that I was profoundly moved and encouraged by one parable after another over the years I was becoming a Christian again.
I like the idea of pondering beyond the “approved” answers to questions. We interpret in different ways as the Spirit leads and or own understanding changes as we mature. Sharing each other’s thoughts prompts us to reconsider and expand our own. Perhaps that was Jesus’ intent for parables.
I have one of those mustard seeds in a ball/globe. It belonged to my mother. She told me why she had it years ago but I cannot remember the story today. I found it in some of her things after she passed away. I decided to keep it. Not sure why, maybe I need to go back and look at that parable again
Thank you for this invitation to go wilding in our minds and hearts. It has been a long time since this mustard seed (pine nut in The Message) parable has reminded me of the glass charms with a mustard seed inside them. Girls wore them on their charm bracelets and on chains around their necks during the 50s, maybe into the 60s. I had a charm bracelet was not given a mustard seed glass ball/globe. I never asked for one. I do remember most who wore them knew the parable. A constant reminder of the kin-dom of God and how it begins in each of us and grows as we tell our stories of relationship, sit with one another in silence, listen to the other and be in the world in which we were placed to become part of the place where the weary and the hopeful may find a place of safety, warmth and love.