A dove was cooing sadly by a stream.

Another dove asked what wat the matter.

“I am the deputy director in charge of a crew of beavers to build a dam here,” the first dove said.  “I did everything right I knew how.  I consulted the crows.  I consulted the parrots.  I held many meetings to explain my plan in detail to the beavers.  I fired beavers who didn’t display a team ethic.  I set metrics.  I reviewed records.  I monitored implementation of the plan.  But…” she tilted her head towards the stream.  It ran undammed.

“Maybe the beavers had low morale,” the second dove said.

The director dove replied, “I had an open door policy, so long as the discussions were constructive.”

“Then you did everything right,” the second dove replied.  “It must be the beavers’ fault.”

A bearded pilgrim without a pilgrimage was walking down a path when it forked.

He looked down the path to the one side and thought, “who knows, if I take this path I may end up coming to a village that needs a carpenter like me.  I settle down, marry a nice bouncy lass, have a brood of kids, rollick in the harvest festivals in the autumn, grumble about the scarce food with everyone else in the spring… and then when I am old, I will lie in my bed dying and think, was this all, what of the drums and bugles and clash of arms, what happened to the greatness I could have achieved?”

He looked down the path to the other side and thought, “who knows, if I take this path I may end up coming to a town where there is a sergeant taking recruits at the drumhead.  I will enlist, perform prodigies of valor, and due to  my strength and cunning and the casualties of war become an officer and a captain and a colonel.  Then I will throw off the strictures of my corrupt government, seize rule myself with my loyal men at my back, and then turn to the liberation of all the nearby countries till I am crowned emperor on the edge of the endless sea with all the known world at my feet behind me–and then when I am old, I will lie in bed dying and think, was this worth it, I left so much behind, what it is like to tell tales to your apple-cheeked children around the fire while the winter wind howls outside?”

Another man came down the path.  At the fork, he found a bearded pilgrim laying stretched out on the ground, arms stretched out desperately reaching as far as he could, one down each path.

A new train engineer was learning about his duties and his assigned route.

“first,” he was told, ” there’s a long slope down.  You can coast, gathering speed.”

“Next,” he was told, “there is a long flat stretch.  You can coast for a while on the speed from the slope and then you will continue to chug along under your own power.”

“Sounds easy,” the fresh-faced engineer said, ” so what’s the problem?”

“The problem is the switch.  When you come barreling down the slope and are abruptly pulled up by the flats.”

We are driving across some of the flat, open parts of the country so trains are on my mind.  You can see them coming from a long way off.

Hence this parable.

There once was a newly-built train.  At the switching station, it looked out on its first track all the way across the gleaming plain to the distant white city in the far, far horizon.  The train was full of enthusiasm.  “I am going to roll on all the way to that city!”  it said.

An old worn-down train nearby wearily set about tempering the new train’s expectations.  “You have no idea how far that city really is,” the train said.  “Nor how difficult it is.  You feel good now, but wait until you are trying to get your wheels to turn in sand.  Or in swamp, heavens, oh man, swamp.”

“Why would I do that?” the new train said cheerfully.  “I will simply stay on the track.”

The older train was aghast.  “Stay on the tracks!  Are you crazy?  Live a little!”

It started out with me musing about teaching even young children about budgeting and maybe trade-offs.

Imagine a young mother sitting at a table doing some budgeting by a woodstove.  The clear sunlight of winter streams in through the window.  She’s doing it partly in paper and pencil so her children can see and experience her doing it.  Having them learn about budgeting is important to her.

She gets an idea.

She calls over her little girl.  The child is maybe 3 to 4, maybe even 5.  The mother takes out some wooden blocks of different colors and labels them, including maybe with little drawings.  She uses some long plain blocks to create a square.

“Here,” she said, “let’s play the the Big Person Game.”  The kid is excited.  The mother explains that the square is the money they have to spend each month, the blocks have to fit inside it.  Any blocks that cannot fit they cannot use.  Fitting blocks is something the child does, so she understands.  Then the mother lays down some blocks.  “Here’s paying for the house, here’s a block for the lights and the electricity, here’s a block for the car, here’s the basic food we need, here’s some clothes.”  Then, as the mother designed, she shows the child there is a little space left and shows the child some blocks that could fit into it.  Ice cream, maybe.  Toys.  A trip to the ocean.  Small things that are discretionary where letting the child have some say can do no harm and possibly good.

(more…)

A modern day parable of the refiner’s fire:

If you treat wood so that it partially destroys the inner structure, then subject it to heat, and pressure, it ends up stronger than steel.

Can literally stop bullets.

The greatest sculptor who ever lived began where Michelangelo left off.  He made statues that changed their meaning a hundred times as you walked around it.  He made great, towering works that shifted their content as you walked towards them–the work was not just one sculpture of genius but several, depending on your angle.  He made outdoor pieces whose meaning and beauty shifted with the sun.

That was the first phase of his work. (more…)

Several young architectural students were surveying a grand old building.  Mostly they were criticizing it.  They pointed out various real flaws here and there.  That window was misaligned.  That cornice was damaged.  They then went back to their school to resume drafting cheap McMansions to be built en masse on sandy soil.

But one student stayed behind.  He was starstruck.  “Look how solid those foundations, are!”  he said.  “This building can last forever.  Look how it was built to be easily repaired and even added on to!”

The beaver proposed building a dam on  the creek, but the creatures who dwelled on the bank naturally demurred.

The beaver then returned with a new proposal.  He would place sticks and logs in the stream so that if a creature fell in, it might find something to cling to.  This safety measure, he averred, if done properly, might even offer an easy way to cross the waters.

He received their assent.

Unaccountably, after he had installed his safety measure-cum-transport option, the creek flooded.

Oh my, the beaver said.  I will have to add more safety measures, they are needed now more than ever.

Three Saints met.

I am the Prophet, said the first. I give guidance from God.

I am the Bishop, said the second. I am a Judge in Israel and a minister to His flock.

I am just the Nursery Leader, said the third. The Nursery Leader looked downcast.

The Bishop tried to offer some kind of reassurance but the Prophet hushed him.

All I do is . . . the Nursery Leader went on . . . All I do is . . . is personally hold and sing with and teach literal children of God at their earliest and most impressionable stages.

The Nursery Leader brightened.

The Nursery Leader then added, “and I wouldn’t be able to do any of it if it weren’t for the guidance from the Prophet and the calling from the Bishop!”

They all three were very happy together.

A crow on a fence spoke to the bull in the field.

“Your bellow is not beautiful,” said the crow. “You should try to sound more like a nightingale. ” The crow squawked triumphantly at what it evidently considered to be a real zinger.

The bull replied,  “Nightingales sing beautifully, no doubt.  What my herd needs to hear is the bellow of a bull. ”

(more…)

C.S. Lewis once said something like the essence of myth is that the person who makes it doesn’t see it as an allegory, but the hearer keeps seeing hints of allegories in it.

He is technically wrong, but substantially right.  A mythmaker can have an allegorical meaning in mind.  But the myth has to be stronger than their allegory for it to work.

Take Mr. Lewis’ own allegory, Pilgrim’s Regress.  Its nothing but allegory and pleasant enough in its way.  I can speak, though, of three different passages which I keep coming back to.   They have that kind of force.  For some of them, I don’t even remember what the original allegorical meaning was supposed to be.

The first is the giant whose sight turns people transparent so that you can see their bowels and their bones.

The second is the parable of the man closely pursued by enemies.  His wife sees him coming and is perplexed.  If she cuts down the bridge that leads to their home, he will be stranded on the other side with his enemies.  If she doesn’t, his enemies will cross with him.

Those two I don’t really recall the allegorical point Lewis was making, at least not off the top of my head.

The third passage proves my point the best, since it is the most clearly allegorical but is also a passage that I have *felt* many times.  It’s about the home of Mr. Wisdom.  He and his children live a quiet, sober life there.  They dine on plain fare and are content.  But at night, his children in a trance fly off to participate in witches sabbaths and bloody melees and the like.

The point is that a myth, to really work, has to have some weight to it apart from the message its supposed to be teaching.  Which is why Mr. Wisdom and his children have come to my mind at times that had nothing to do with the message that rationalists subconsciously derive their emotional satisfaction from elsewhere.

My best parables can sometimes have a very clear message, but they have a power beyond the message.

Poet Head, for instance, is so self-consciously message fiction that I literally call the head poet heads and sober heads.  But it still works.

A bull was gazing longingly over the fence into the next pasture.

“What’s the attraction of that pasture?” asked a pigeon on the fence.

“It’s greener,” said the bull.

“But look at all the hills,” said the pigeon, “they are greener too.”

The bull looked around. “Yes” he said, “now I want to roam all the hills, grazing there too.”

Moral: The vignette came to me first. I am undecided if the moral is something about ambition and desire being limitless. Or if the moral is that you need somebody to help you elevate your ambitions.

A certain lamb was being loaded onto a livestock trailer for the trip to the slaughterhouse.  As the tractor-trailer drove off, the lamb squirmed its way through the tightly pressed sheep to catch a glimpse out a ventilation hole, a glimpse of the pastures the lamb was leaving behind.

“At last, freedom at last,” the lamb exclaimed.  “No more fences, no more herd dogs!”

A worker put some wood into the furnace of an unlit boiler then tried to light it.

“What are you doing?”  his boss said.  “Studies show that there is a tight correlation between the amount of the wood and the heat of the fire.  Corporate wants us to do nothing but add more  wood.  Everything else is a waste of time.”

Moral:  You cannot start a fire by adding more wood.

Related: Light a Fire that will Never Go Out