Neighbor

As part of Joe Carter’s “Meet You Neighbor” campaign, let me introduce you to Drew, at Darn Floor. It didn’t take me long to discover that Drew and I walk the same spiritual and political paths. He’s got a great site and his political insight is great. He has the following to say regarding the title of his blog:

I was reminded last night that I hadn’t yet explained the origin of this blog’s name as I promised in my first post.

The name “Darn Floor” was inspired by the 1987 Daniel Amos album “Darn Floor - Big Bite,” which was, in turn, inspired by Koko the Gorilla. Koko was taught to communicate using American Sign Language. After experiencing an earthquake, Koko described what happened by signing “Darn darn floor bad bite. Trouble trouble.” Given her limited base of knowledge and the limits of her form of communication, what else could she say? “Darn floor” is as good a description of an earthquake as any.

On their “Darn Floor - Big Bite” album, Daniel Amos uses this incident as a symbol of our clumsy attempts to explain God. Given the limits of our comparatively pea-sized brains, and acknowledging the limits of our admittedly complex language, our attempts to describe the ineffable are certainly going to fall short. We resort to metaphor. God is father, friend, lover, companion. God is just. God is forgiving. God is higher than the highest heavens. God is closer than a brother. God is a consuming fire.

Please spend some time kicking around his site. You won’t be dissapointed.