Mtr Mary Trainor

He was standin' by the highway
With a sign that just said "Mother"  …*

Dear friend,

We lost Gordon Lightfoot this past week, a folk songwriter and performer well known to those in my age group. His words are sprinkled throughout this Daily Bread, selected from one of my favorites.

Songwriters, poets, artists from various media, can be powerful truth-tellers, courageous prophets, farsighted seers. They communicate in metaphor, symbol, story, enabling me to perceive something I might not be able to put together on my own.

He was just a road musician
To the taverns he would go  …
How the world fell on his shoulders
Back in Boulder I don't know  …

Jesus often communicates as an artist does, indirectly, sideways, with metaphor and parable.

Today’s Daily Office reading from Luke offers us an example. Some of John the Baptist’s disciples are sent to ask Jesus if he is “the one who is to come or are we to wait for another?” 

Jesus might respond with “yes, I am the one.” It is simple, it is the truth, and it directly answers the questions posed.

Instead of a simple answer though, he lays out what has been happening in his travels, and leaves John’s disciples to draw their own conclusion: “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news brought to them.”

For me it’s like comparing a photograph of a night sky with Van Gogh’s Starry Night. Both offer a truth about the heavens above, but only the painting quickens my heart, When it involves earthly matters, perhaps the quick answer suffices. But when it comes to heavenl matters, I want the Artist to answer.

Won't you listen to me brother
If you ever loved your mother
Please pull off on the shoulder
If you're goin' Milwaukee way
It's ten degrees and getting colder
Down by Boulder dam today.

Mtr Mary

*10 Degrees and Getting Colder, Gordon Lightfoot