Here, metaphor is a strategy of desperation, not decoration. —Sally McFague, Models of God I was born from nothing and to nothing I will return. The biological explanation of birth is that sperm meets egg, a single cell divides: oocyte, zygote, bone. The spiritual explanation is that God sends a spark down, and the spark takes full flare as a human. The biological explanation of my epilepsy is that a small scar formed on the left temporal lobe of my brain; the spiritual explanation is that God, in sculpting me from paste, nicked his nail against my gray matter, a small mistake, an error born of love and touch. I have always loved churches. My father, Paul David, was a Hebrew School teacher and a man in the bakery business. My mother, Anita Ann, was a Zionist and a believer in Aliyah. But I, Jewish by blood, have always preferred churches, because a seizure in a synagogue means disruption and embarrassment, whereas a seizure in church is part of the holy atmosphere. Churches are places for the two-tongued and the fainters, for broken bodies.
