Tutor Tuesday – metaphor hunt

In order to do my part for the development of the arts at the grassroots of the Baha’i community, I will be posting a weekly idea for tutors who hope to integrate poetry into their study circles.

Tutor Tuesday #1: metaphor hunt

Suggested for: any book, but especially Book 1

As Baha’is, we are constantly surrounded by metaphor. Metaphor is when we state that one thing is another, symbolically speaking. Here are a few examples:

• the Divine Springtime (the coming of the Manifestation of God)
• the Nightingale of Paradise (Baha’u'llah)
• the Maid of Heaven (the Holy Spirit)
• the city of the heart
• the letters B and E joined and knit together (the act of creation)
• the stream of utterance

We know that Baha’u'llah was not a nightingale, which is a simple bird, incapable of perceiving even the most basic of spiritual truths. Nevertheless, this metaphor helps us to understand an aspect of the reality of Baha’u'llah, which is so far above our comprehension.

Exercise 1: Go on a metaphor hunt through the Writings that your group is studying. Make a collaborative list of them. Choose a few favorites, and discuss what they stand for and what they teach us about spiritual reality. Select one and use it as the basis for a poem, talking about a spiritual subject in metaphorical terms.

Exercise 2: Make up new metaphors for spiritual conditions. Maybe you feel less like a broken-winged bird today, and more like a worm drowning on the sidewalk on an April morning. Perhaps the Writings seem like a perfectly ripe mango to you, begging you to taste of its sweetness and make each bite a part of your self.

Don’t worry if the made-up metaphors are less elegant than those of Baha’u'llah or ‘Abdu’l-Baha. If participants are unbearably embarrassed about their inadequacy, they can even write poetry about the feeling! Invent the clumsiest metaphors your group can think of, and write poems making fun of how awful they are compared to those in the Writings. Remember, in showing the reality of our own weakness, we also glorify God’s strength.

Tutor Tuesday is posted every Tuesday that the electricity is on, the network up, and an intensive teaching project not in progress. Comments are always welcome.