Anagrams have often been my bane…
You shouldn’t be surprised, however, that I like puzzles to boot! There is something enjoyable about taking a word or phrase, shuffling the letters around, and coming up with a new word or phrase. It was often a puzzle of sorts we played during the holiday celebrations at school, back in the 60’s. How many different words can you make from the word Halloween, Christmas, Thanksgiving, etc. These exercises were looking for word subsets.
Anagram’s require you to use every letter. That’s a different ball game!
I’m better at Boggle, or Word Jumble, where you take scattered letters and make them into words. You know, Scrabble-like. The problem with anagrams is there is probably a “right” answer and too many wrong options. It all depends on who created the anagram. And for which possible audience was it created for…
There was a movie a few years back that dealt with mysterious company called “Setec Astronomy”. While playing Scrabble the main character realized the company name could be an anagram, so they played with the letters and worked up numerous possibilities. But only one meant something to the main character. No one else would have grasped that it was the correct answer. Except for the one.
This is my problem with anagram’s! Often a single person (think Robert Langdon in Dan Brown’s books like Da Vinci Code) will get a solution that means something to them, and everyone else remains clueless. This is like being in a room when someone laughs at a joke and are the only one who gets it. Everyone else feels out of place! Someone got the joke and it wasn’t me…
Jesus spoke in parables, often. Unlike anagrams, they simply mean that the casual listener will get the broad lesson or meaning, but hidden within its words are a deeper meaning. Like the skin of an onion, keep peeling back the layers and you reveal the innards.
Once, after speaking in a parable, his disciples asked for the deeper meaning. They were beginning to learn how Jesus communicated. He mainly spoke in parables (Mark 4:34).
And his disciples asked him, saying, What might this parable be? And he said, Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God: but to others in parables; that seeing they might not see, and hearing they might not understand. Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God. (Luke 8:9-11 KJV)
This is a good thing. Much of what we learn today has a deeper meaning. Sometimes it’s called the “back story”. Other times it alludes to details we don’t have time to investigate. Still, other times it’s simply over the head of the casual hearer.
It’s in my brain to dive deep. Swim hard. And find that pearl of wisdom.
One aspect of this entire thought – it may not be an anagram, or some deeper secret meaning. It may simply mean, “Setec Astronomy.”