Sunday 6/14/15

 

Today's gospel is the beginning of what is called The Parables of the Kingdom where Christ talks about God and the universe of God in terms of, today, sowing and the mustard seed. There is an interesting line on Man watching the planted seed sprout and grow "he knows not how." This implies a distance between analysis and what is happening.

Here are a few connections to the idea:

"I wonder to myself how they can all get on without me - how they manage, bird and flower, without me to keep the calendar for them. For I noted it so carefully and lovingly, day by day, the seed-leaves on the mound in the sheltered places that come so early, the pushing up of the young grass, the succulent dandelion, the coltsfoot on the heavy, thick clods, the trodden chickweed despised at the foot of the gate-post, so common and small, and yet so dear to me."                                                                                          'Hours of Spring' (1889), 'At Home on the Earth: A new selection of the later writings of Richard Jefferies' (2001).

This day relenting God Hath placed within my hand A wondrous thing; and God Be praised. At His command, Seeking His secret deeds With tears and toiling breath, I find thy cunning seeds, O million-murdering Death. I know this little thing A myriad men will save. O Death, where is thy sting? Thy victory, O Grave?
~Sir Ronald Ross
Poem he wrote following the discovery that the malaria parasite was carried by the amopheline mosquito. 

The great physicist Freeman Dyson was interviewed about his book of essays Dreams of Earth and Sky on BookTV and was asked about his favorite sci-fi writers. He gave a few suggestions and then said this about sci-fi and their writers:
They are all wonderful stories, but people primarily concerned with religion than science and that is the truth, religion goes far deeper into history, goes far deeper into our way of thinking than science so I am an advocate of science fiction not because it has anything to contribute to science but because it has a lot to contribute to wisdom.