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You are here: Home / News / The Transformative Power of Metaphor

The Transformative Power of Metaphor

August 25, 2016 By Collegeville Institute Leave a Comment

2016 writing workshop The Transformative Power of Metaphor participants (left to right): Isaac Villegas, Laura Hudson, Melissa Florer-Bixler, Dave Nantais, Catherine Lee, Sara Spohr, Ajung Sojwal, Mary Nilsen (workshop facilitator), Scott Cartwright, Becky Poe, Alexandra Grese, Barbara Rossing

How do you describe love? A heavy blanket? A limitless ocean? A fiery, burning sun?

Metaphor is the key to conveying abstract concepts, such as purpose or meaning, sin or grace, or the ultimate abstraction—God. Last week, a group of pastors, chaplains, pastoral associates, and others met at the Collegeville Institute for The Transformative Power of Metaphor: A Week with Mary Nilsen — our last summer writing workshop of 2016. As a group, these writers explored controlling metaphor, complete metaphor, braided metaphor and extended metaphor under the guidance of Mary Nilsen.

When participants reflected on Mary Nilsen’s facilitation, one remarked: “Mary is terrific! She was “straight” with us about the realities of the writing world and in our workshop times without ever being harsh… I would not hesitate to take a workshop from her again if I had the opportunity.”

A pastor who took the workshop is implementing lessons learned. She wrote: “I already used several insights from this workshop in my weekly meeting with other pastors today as we looked at imagery in lectionary texts together. I shared with them the idea that human beings receive transformational insights in metaphor form; in order to change minds and hearts, we must help people learn new metaphors.”

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