Today I learn from the neighborhood children all of their digging stories. Children seem to have lots of these: digging in sand; digging in dirt; digging in snow. They report the treasures they’ve unearthed in the form of bones and shells and marbles and old pennies.
“If you dig deep enough, you will find something,” a little girl tells me. She explains that once, last summer, she struck water just by digging and digging.
I recall my own tendency to dig as a child. Finding worms, I admit, was a particular delight. But I also believed that I would find buried treasure if only I kept digging. And usually, I actually did. I’d get to a layer of earth and find what I thought was magnificent: a piece of turtle shell, a strangely shaped stone (an arrowhead?), or an old piece of twine.
This instinct to dig stays with me, even today, as I work to turn up beauty. It does feel like excavation. There’s a layer down deep that holds the day’s treasures. I think of analogies–of symbols–that things I encounter might represent. It’s as if a spiritual current runs beneath this dust and dirt of life. Dig deep enough, and you strike water.
We just keep digging, and it’s surely there.
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Journal: The Great Awakening preacher, Jonathan Edwards, practiced the art of analogy–or making connections between the natural world and a spiritual truth. What else do I see today that helps me, by analogy, understand something about God?
