A Puzzlement

When I tell people I write a blog, they inevitably ask, “what is your blog about?” I suppose the answer is that Riddles on the Harp is about anything I find puzzling.  For that reason, I will never run out of things to blog about.

To my mind, a blog is a form of personal essay. Essayist Dinty W. Moore stews on this in Crafting the Personal Essay. He calls essay writing a gentle art where writers explore a topic from their own unique perspective.  They begin with questions rather than answers.

In an essay in the Atlantic’s 2011 special fiction issue, Bret Anthony Johnston says writers may enter stories through literal experience but that that fiction transcends the limitations of fact and history. “What matters is our characters, those constructions of imagination that can transcend our biases and agendas... “

Johnston is speaking of the characters we create in our writing, but this is also true of our moral character.  We reach greater heights when we approach a topic from a platform of integrity, courage, fortitude honesty and loyalty instead of an agenda that boxes us in with people who agree with us and shuts everyone else out.

 The joy of placing a riddle on your harp is in the process of discovery. In the course of forming words into patterns on a page, the writer listens for what rings true and hopes others will also hear a pleasing melody.

Riddles are often amusing and always engaging. That the image of a riddle on a harp comes from the Bible is not surprising.  The Bible is riddled with word play. What is a parable but a metaphor or allegory to ponder or a conundrum to try to resolve? The parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:36) works on many levels.  When Jesus poses the question, “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” he expands the meaning of the word neighbor just by asking the question.

That God chooses the foolish things of the world to shame the wise (1Cor:27) has always been a puzzle for me. What holds meaning for God’s people is undecipherable when we rely on our own resources of intelligence, wealth and power. Why, then, is my first instinct to reason, spend or manipulate my way out of a problem rather than to pray?  I have to ask myself.