The Flintknappers’ Parable

The Flintknappers’ Parable :


The Flintknappers’ Parable :I once sat and observed the trade of a flintknapper.
The artist was at a later stage of reducing a large white stone into a long, thin well flaked blade. With each carefully planned flake detachment, a new opportunity for yet another flake removal arose, a new fork in the road.
Life is like a flintknapper taking flakes off a biface, each new flake that is removed, good or bad, long or short, yields a new opportunity and a new fork in the road, he must decide which path to take.
After quite some time, the thin well shaped blade was nearly complete; a load snap broke the repetitive metronome like blows, some choice vernaculars from the flintknapper’s tongue. Yet the flintknapper did not discard the stone. The flintknapper reached into his kit and pulled out an abrasive stone, removed the jagged spots from the end shock and began thinning down the area. After a bit of time and “clank, click, clank” of the flintknapper’s tools, I heard a bystander comment;"those are the two most beautiful matching white spear points I have ever scene”. It appeared as if the knapper had set down with the purpose of creating this beautiful matching set of white spear points and this flintkanpper was the star of the knap in. Life is like that, sometimes we have our biface of life snapped in half, and when all seems lost, and after some flakes of time, and against all odds, something great comes out of it.