Thursday, February 16, 2006

Lampshades

My mother used to own this awful lamp. Actually, she still has the lamp, and it works fine. It was the lampshade that was awful. It’s funny how you always remember the lampshade and never the lamp itself. It was a disgusting mustard colour with this frilly fringe and a laced edging around the rim. It had that old kind of feel but short of really antique, so it just looked ugly rather than classical.


Jesus never told any parables about lampshades. I’m not sure that the lamps of the day were really powerful enough to warrant shading. But in Luke 8 he does talk about lamps where the light gets obscured – maybe because they’re put under a bed – which seems nonsensical (which was Jesus’ point) or under a jar which seems self-defeating if the result is the flame going out for lack of oxygen.

What happens if a lampshade is so ugly that no one wants to own the lamp anymore? The light remains the same but the lampshade style of the day is just plain ugly. Will anyone bother with the lamp? Will anyone even try turning on the light?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

If it is dark enough. If the person experiences enough pain from running into things in the room. They will suffer the shock to their sensibilities.

Then having experienced the benefits of the lamp, they will probably try to change the shade.

Steve said...

Wait a second... is this one of those things where you're talking about one thing, but really you're talking about something completely different that's not the one thing? Cuz I don't know what we're talking about anymore.

BJ said...

Its just a lamp...but your truth is your truth...