People are Trees

A hello from the highlands with some metaphorical ponderings and musical recommendations.

“They are like trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in its season, and their leaves do not wither. In all that they do, they prosper…” (Psalm 1:3)

Dear Friends,
Happy Saturday! My temporary exile (due to my rat infested house) has turned out to be quite pleasant: I spent most of the past week at my friend’s ancestral farm in the highlands (well, very nearly the highlands).

I’ve started work in earnest on writing my book on metaphors. Metaphors are something I’ve thought about a long time, and had some occasion to write about a bit in my PhD thesis. While metaphors can seem like a dry academic thing to think about, bringing to mind high school English classes. But it is my conviction that the metaphors we use to describe ourselves and our world shape how we act and live in this world. A small testament to me of this fact was the incredibly strong response I had to this tweet a few years ago, which was in essence, presenting one predominant metaphor for people and productivity, and offering an alternative metaphor in its place:

Joy Marie Clarkson ☀️ @joynessthebrave

you are not a machine. you are more like a garden. you need different things on different days. a little sun today, a little less water tomorrow. you have fallow and fruitful seasons. it is not a design flaw. it is wiser than perpetual sameness. what does your garden need today?

This week, I’ve been thinking about one of the main metaphors that is given for people in scripture: people as trees.