Taber-Chuckle II: Nov 23, 2011

Psalm 119:105 — Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path.

At least, that's what the sign wanted to say, if there were enough room.

 

Now that I have a new route to and from work, I miss my old Taberchuckle source. That had some beauties. In it's place, I have chosen a big Lutheran church by the freeway. While they typically do not make up inspirational phrases as the old Taber did, they do pick actual passes, so far as I've seen. What I am finding nice about this approach is that it lets me take a sentence and expound  upon it. The wording might be slightly concatenated to fit the sign but I look it up and see how it plays in context and what was left out. Here is the inaugural Taberchuckle II.

 

What always irks me the most is the call to subservience. You would think that with Christianity growing out of the enslaved peoples of Rome, they might want to shake of those vestiges of bondage. Equally as annoying is the constant harping on the same note that "my was is the only way and you are shit without it". What company wouldn't want to see their product to half of the world with simple messaging like that? It is this aspect that annoys me with this phrase.

 

Let's start with the "to my feet" component. Why is this here? It could certainly be a vestige of archaic phrasing that is lost to us now but I know how to walk without looking at my feet so lighting my path would sufficient, thank you very much. Next, why is the traveller so fixated on his feet? Why isn't she watching where she's going? More to the point, why is the scenery being ignored? Because it is wicked and evil? Says who? Maybe it's because our traveller might see another path, one that is better lit and with better scenery and fraught with less peril?

What about the traveller who does not need the light, who has better night vision because of genetics or because he already knows the road? Maybe I am luminous on my own and do not need your light. Why travel at night in the first place?

There is a reason that the iconography for knowledge is a lamp. The whether it's Diogenes looking for the wise man or jebus and its brand of truthiness, they both offer knowledge. One is good to you now, the other when you're dead. Which benefits you more? That is the individual's true choice.

 

Maybe I don't like the brand of oil this message provides. I'll still use oil in my lamp, just not  yours. Plus, I'm going to look down that road to see what's coming rather than focus on where I am at just that moment. Looking down the road, I can see some of the wonders the future might bring and spot opportunities to take a different path and to plan for that change, instead of marching along in the dark, staring at my own two feet, eyes averted to the world.

 

Keep that head bowed, traveller.