The parable is an interesting way of communicating - unique in fact. A parable is a written piece much like a documentary film that allows the observer to find their way in, in an array of ways.
In the Prodigal Son, for instance, one can connect with the father who has experienced his much loved son's brokenness from a distance. There is the deep pain and profound angst of every parent who has witnessed their child's suffering of whatever sort. Or the father in the parable can be a metaphor for the forgiveness that pours forth from our Heavenly Father/Mother. Or we find ourselves connecting up with the son who stayed home so miffed and jealous at the unjustifiable welcome the prodigal son receives. That kind of anger and sense of betrayal can derail a life and fill the heart with bitterness. Or we are taken up with the sense of the lost being found. We all from time to time feel lost. Faith grants us the perception that we will be found - by God.
The journey from self-deception to authenticity is what purposes being alive. This poor lost chap with the pigs is each of us in so many ways. Pigs just give it a little more Jewish drama. Here, we are lost in the questional security that prosperity brings - lost in the property values and lawnmowers and piles of questionable possessions. Lost in modernity: sports, television, the Internet, video games and on and on.
Finding our way home is the journey of Love, God's Love. It is deep and not easily contained in doctrine or notion, but this documentary story puts the experience of the homeward journey to the Source clearly before us. We can sense ourselves in the narrative experience of the homecoming. Without a set of rules to obey - no righteous overtones. Conflict mediated by love. A middle-eastern honor based on family bursting from the confinement of tradition into newness, joy, welcome, forgiveness,gratitude, the dignified father hauling up his robes and rushing out, overcome with joy to welcome home his lost son.
The parable is not like the commandments - full of "musts" - instead it invites us to be found by the love of God. It doesn't give us a complex theology, just invites us to come home to the deep - to turn to God. There isn't a set of beliefs that are needed to understand so we can begin. The parable offers us a set of" beloves" to search our hearts with. Simple and infinitely complex, we get an invitation to the journey to the heart of God. We are awakened to a myriad of devotional possibilities , down deep inside!
Quakerism takes experience seriously as a way of mediating faith. The experience of being alive is one of growing from alienation of the divided self to a unity is nourished by our worshipful listening in the silence. What we hear like a murmur from the proverbial sea shell - a call to come home as Tagore tells it, "like a flock of homesick cranes flying night and day to their mountain nests - in one salutation to Thee."