Finding authenticity in figures of speech

Finding authenticity in figures of speech

What made me first fall in love with creative writing or reading creative works is the beautiful and meaningful use of figures of speech. A masterful use of figures of speech can evoke a heightened feeling of insight and surplus of meaning that simply cannot be conveyed by plain language sometimes.

When I do my own qualitative research, I try to search for analogies that can parallel or fit the phenomenon I am trying to explain. Analogies can also allow us to appreciate the limits of our explanations at the moments where the analogies break or do not parallel the phenomenon being explained anymore. When I tried to explain the viability of HEI-based social enterprise incubators in my dissertation, drawing parallels between literal egg incubators and SE incubators revealed an important contextual difference. Egg incubators strive to and can control the external environment of the incubatee (temperature of the environment) while SE incubators can only help mitigate risks (can market conditions really be controlled by startups?).

Relating it to the gospel today, Jesus acknowledged that He had to rely on parables and figures of speech to convey principles he wanted us to gain insight to. If the realm of the supernatural are indeed beyond us, we may not possess language or the intellect to understand the Divine without Jesus as a Mediator.

When will that hour come when we would no longer need figures of speech to understand the Divine? Is it in death? Maybe.

But for now, the parables and other figures of speech can help us extract more meaning and beauty. At that moment of insight and subsequent action, we can find and manifest authenticity that allows us to flourish even at our own lifetime.

John 16:23b-28. The hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figures (of speech) but I will tell you clearly about the Father

[DAILY GOSPEL INSIGHTS AND REFLECTION FOR MANAGEMENT AND ORGANIZATION 148: MAY 28, 2022]