A Priest, a Musician, and a Physicist
I
“Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin.”
— Zechariah 4:10
“Whenever I want to write a big song, I can’t. A big song meaning spatial. I want to write about outer space, I want to write about the huge glacially large space inside of the heart, and that’s when I get writer’s block. Because I try to put basically a song to fill the entire galaxy.
But if I write a song about something the size of a glass of water, and I do it right, I notice a week later it’s got the universe in it.”
— John Mayer, musician
“The universality of the gravitational law — the fact that it extends over such enormous distances. Cavendish’s little model of the solar system — the two balls attracting — has to be expanded 10 million million times to become the solar system. And then, 10 million million times expanded once again, and we find the galaxies attracting each other by exactly the same law.
Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her patterns, so that each small piece of her fabric reveals the organization of the entire tapestry.”
— Richard Feynman, physicist
II
Our appetite for more — to consume, accumulate, control — blinds us.
When we patiently practice, bit by bit, to reduce and remove, we may, with Divine grace, begin to see what abundance surrounds us.
To see the universe in a grain of sand, blade of grass, drop of water.
To see the Divine in the seemingly ordinary.
—
1. Zechariah
2. John Mayer