A little over five years ago I lost my job. It was a terrifying experience. Intellectually, I believed in God and trusted in his providence, but emotionally, I found myself asphyxiated by fear. I couldn’t see any way for God to lead my family and me out of utter ruin. I had no savings, no sense of direction, and zero self-confidence. I felt adrift and alone.
I remember thinking, I’m a pretty good writer; maybe I can do something with that? I even joked with a colleague about starting a writing business that specialized in responding to negative employee evaluations and composing letters of resignation. I didn’t seriously entertain the thought, though—writing was a romantic waste of time, and what I needed was something practical to get me through my current crisis. Ironically, when I look back, I can see that writing and my love of language—specifically metaphors and analogies—is precisely what got me through that trying time.
Hungry for Meaning
Among man’s greatest spiritual hungers is his hunger for meaning. Armed with a strong sense of purpose, men and women can bear burdens, carry crosses, and handle hardships that might otherwise seem impossible to manage. Without that sense of purpose, however, even a life of luxury becomes insufferable. I knew that if I could make sense of what I was going through, I could endure to the end, but how exactly does one do that? How do we find meaning for our lives? How do we appease our appetite for purpose in times of spiritual famine?
By metaphoraging.
The Dictionary of Drapeauvian Neologisms defines metaphoraging thus: “the act of searching for spiritual sustenance and meaning in metaphors and analogies, drawn often—but not exclusively—from the Bible.” This word is a portmanteau a la Drapeau, a chimera, if you will. It places the head of the noun metaphor on the body of the verb foraging and so, creates an entirely new kind of animal.
The word metaphor means “to transfer.” Expressions like The tongue is a fire, All the world’s a stage, and My co-worker is a hemorrhoid all imply a resemblance between two things by transferring the qualities of one to the other. By metaphoraging, we look for ways to understand our lives and ourselves in terms of a larger metaphor. Consequently, we’re able to imbue our experiences with meaning—meaning that can transform seemingly pointless suffering into a significant experience.
Being Let Go
In my particular situation, metaphoraging through the biblical narrative of the Exodus helped me to see being “let go” in a whole new light.
When the Israelites first went into Egypt, Egypt was a welcoming land of plenty where the Israelites prospered. Likewise, my former place of employment was a great blessing for me and my wife. We were fruitful; we multiplied. But the Israelites were never meant to stay forever in Egypt—it was not the Promised Land. In time, the Israelites went from being honored guests to being hateful slaves. Eventually, they needed to be let go. So did I.
Now, I don’t want to give readers the wrong impression. I don’t think my former employer hated me—I wasn’t the Suffering Servant; the inequities I bore were all my own—but, like the biblical Israelites, I was a slave. I was enslaved to comfort, to security, to the status quo. I wore pretty golden handcuffs and had plenty of meat to eat from the fleshpots of Egypt, but I was a slave.
I knew I was unhappy. I knew I was called to freedom, but I was, as the Bible says, stiff-necked. If they hadn’t let me go, I would have never left my former job. I might have murmured for a generation, but I would have never left.
Thank God my contract wasn’t renewed.
If it had been, I don’t think there is any way I’d be as close to God as I am now. I wouldn’t have learned to trust Him—really trust Him—for daily bread. I wouldn’t have believed that God still sends quail—like the next job I got—as a writer—that I didn’t even apply for. I wouldn’t have believed that, like the bronze serpent Moses held up in the wilderness, the very thing that so wounded me before—teaching—could be the source of so much healing. God brings water from stones—I know this now. Know it in the biblical sense.
Freedom is so much harder than slavery, but it is so much better than slavery. I couldn’t have known this in Egypt.
Above I said that the word metaphor means “to transfer,” but there’s another way to translate it, too. I especially like the wordplay in the other, more literal, definition: “to carry across”. I like it because, after metaphoraging, I have found spiritual sustenance in the metaphor of the Exodus that God has used to carry me across these last five years in the wilderness and in the fact that this same metaphor has also been my very own, very helpful, Simon of Cyrene. (Metaphorically speaking, of course!)
Share on Facebook
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Love the post. How about this coinage:
metaphorophage–someone who literally devours metaphors; one who takes special mental and spiritual nourishment from figurative language.
Of course “trans-fer” is just the literal Latin for “bring across”, just as “meta-phor” is the Greek for the same.
The image in both languages is what a boatman or a ferry pilot does: he brings people across the river on his barge.
The English word “translate” is just derived from the perfect participle of the exact same word; if we say in Latin that something “translatus est”, we mean that it has been brought across the river.
Thanks, Denys. I like metaphorage.
The new edition of Dictionary of Drapeauvian Neologisms will add a note in the definition attributing the first derivative use of the word to you.
It’s funny you should bring up “translate.” I think of that as the one verb that can be applied to all my different responsibilities: father, teacher, business writer, member of the lay faithful–it’s a great word. Your comment makes me want to use it to describe any protestant friends who convert, like our friend Atticus, whose posts I know you miss reading.
Atticus, here is the title of a post I’d like you to write: “Ite, translatus est.” I look forward to reading it…
Oh, and by the way, I’ve got more neologisms up my sleeve.
A foretaste:
–”metaforging” (as both a transitive and an intransitive verb)
–”analogymnastics”
–”metaflora/metafauna”