I feel a small bit like the woman who threw her last penny into the offering pot in the temple. This article is my penny, this column is the offering pot, the readership is the Temple. Because this is the most precious penny I have at the moment.
Metaphors are powerful, because they describe and prescribe our relationships with one another with so few words. Their power lies in their awesome capacity to evoke a world. Metaphors can manifest and deepen our sense of the Holy Mystery, or they can mask and distort. Oftentimes it is a mixture. But the difference is real, and it matters.