Metaphorin Quaker Language

Part A

What is metaphor?

What role does it play in spiritual life?

Part B – A look at Light

What Friends have to say

Part C

Enriching our metaphorical vocabulary

metaphor - a figure of speech in which a word or phrase denoting one kind of object or action is used in place of another to suggest likeness or analogy between them

… or, more simply, an implied comparison.

= GOD

What does metaphor do for us?

Expands our frame of reference beyond words into symbols

“Simplicity clears the springs of life and permits wholesome mirth and gladness to bubble up; it clears the windows of life and lets joy radiate”

Philadelphia Yearly Meeting 1955

Symbols help us to

make the general personal

connect to the divine

explain the unexplainable

and sometimes they are just pretty

Symbols have emotional power

 They expand our perception of reality

They may allow people with different understandings to find points of contact

 They are fluid enough to evolve over time

“The ideas of God and man which have been held in the past must be re-expressed in the light of our own experience and further knowledge”

London Yearly Meeting 1920

A continuous search for

truthand the means of

expressing it