Tag Archive | creation

Little Fella

Hello there, little fella. How is your morning? Welcome. Share with me this little space around these little happy flowers. Are you eating your breakfast, little one? I hope you won’t let me disturb you. Please have your fill. Stay long enough for me to take a pretty picture of you. You brought me happiness this day, staying still with me like this. Thank you for sharing this peace with me, for not fluttering away despite my proximity, for letting me greet you sufficiently. Thank you for your wonder, for your big courage in such a tiny body. Thank you for letting me stay here and look at you. May God bless you. May God bless me. May God bless us all. Amen.

The little brown flying wonder (a moth? a butterfly?) and I, greeting each other.

among us

come, get out from your enclosure and stand among us… [the trees say]

we are all creatures of metabolism, come out where your vibration is affirmed, supported, upheld, played out, and so glow strongly by your own light…

come, let us rejoice of life together, let us be thankful together,

stand among us under the sky …

“7.83 Hz alive” by sacadalang 2014

… winter may come anytime, we remain …

7.83 Hz, the Schumann frequency, is the earth’s and the living organism’s frequency. It’s one of the explanations that science has come up with to the question as to why we feel very good whenever we are outdoors. All of us who are alive, and so the earth, vibrate to this frequency. Persistent disturbance to this vibration becomes physically manifested over time, as a health aberration and the like. So it’s not just actually the loads of oxygen and sunlight of the outdoors that affect us, but rather phenomena on the subatomic level, too.

[ this was taken at the onset of winter, and so the other trees surrounding have already shed their leaves; likewise with the green-sky view at the post previous to this ]

 

Faith and Rubik’s cube

The Rubik’s cube is fascinating. It reminds me of what life is like. Rubik's cube 1 _green

Life is a series of acts in order to put things into order. Order order order. For me I see life, mine at least, as being put into order at some other parts while [I] am occupied with putting into order some other different part.

I have forgotten about this feature in my life until I recently spent time getting to know a 3 x 3 Rubik’s cube. To my delight I saw that when I try to get a side into a single color the other sides may form distinguishable patterns all by themselves.

Rubik's cube 2 _redThere are those who, like me, do not congregate towards the “very” end of the “orderly” spectrum. I may be called lazy by some, but I know I’m not lazy. It’s just that the way my clock runs isn’t the kind that will stand out in the corporate world. Instead, my clock runs in such a way that I take the time to appreciate patterns that aren’t interesting to others. No, I don’t have the aptitude for the mathematical way of describing patterns, so that’s not what I’m talking about, either. There’s just too much stuff needed to be able to math-talk that I run out of time for them. Nevertheless it would be wonderful if I, too, like the mathematicians am able to cook up a statement describing how the color patterns come up when this and that turning is done on a Rubik’s cube.

Rubik's cube 3 _nearlyThe way I, or you, put our lives into order may be objectionable to others. There are those who express disapproval at the way we do things. It could also be that we try to put our lives into order in such a way that we won’t be at the receiving end of a disapproval. Whichever way it is we do feel the tension between these two ways tugging at us. For me it is couched as “what should I do?”

We all have our own pattern-appreciation-languages ::: musical notes, weaving patterns,  words on a page, lines+shapes+lighting, or sound+movement+lighting, angles+weights, trajectory+speed, food tastes, taxonomy, almost-no-words-but-full-of-thoughts (e.g., the haiku) … et cetera

Rubik's cube 4 _nearlyThere are also those who, like me, aren’t experts at a particular pattern-language but all the same we are uplifted whenever we spot an evidence of one.

If you believe in God then this shouldn’t be a surprise for you. Thousands of years ago humans have already become aware that God causes patterns to form. He puts order out of chaos.

Rubuik's cube 5 _orange

At center stage, my Rubik’s cube on my table where my study things are pushed to the side for the moment.

I am typical of my folks. We get to laugh at almost anything, not the least at our own selves. It helps us cope. It helps us from going down that road which is lethal to those who have “nothing”. I needed to put that within quotes because, one, it is subjective, and two, “nothing” doesn’t seem to exist. That’s what I understood the last time I looked up science. But, I fervently request you, don’t discuss creatio ex nihilo with me yet because I haven’t read up much on that. If you want, in relation to it, you can look at discussions about an ancient Mesopotamian composition that starts with “When on high” … 😀 that’s all I can remember for now 😀

I don’t know which part of the world you live in, but just in case you are also like us who are nakakapit sa patalim (living on the edge of a knife) then let the lesson I discovered from the Rubik’s cube encourage you. Just keep on no matter how hard things are going because somehow there’s a pattern forming at the other side, waiting for its perfect time to come up in your life’s story.

We Are Worth Dying For

tall tree“The theology of the cross … is nevertheless first of all a statement about God, and what it says about God is not that God thinks humankind so wretched that it deserves death and hell, but that God thinks humankind and the whole creation so good, so beautiful, so precious in its intention and its potentiality, that its actualization, its fulfillment, its redemption is worth dying for.”

leaves and sky— Douglas John Hall (The Cross in Our Context: Jesus and the Suffering World. 2003. Minneapolis: Fortress)

🙂  I picked this up from the doctoral paper of Mary Christine Lohr entitled Finding a Lutheran Theology of Religions: Ecclesial Traditions and Interfaith Dialogue submitted to the University of Exeter in 2009  🙂

I can’t get enough of reading the part God thinks humankind and the whole creation so good, so beautiful, so precious in its intention and its potentiality, that its actualization, its fulfillment, its redemption is worth dying for again and again. I can’t help but be emotional while I think of the biosphere with all the rain forests and the fauna therein, white and yellow plumeriaall the continents and the peoples in their varied songs and dances, all the music of articulated languages, all the dreams recorded in words and works of art and thriving organizations, all the curiosity bursting forth in scientific theories, inventions and space exploration that has now reached beyond the Solar System. The human is beautiful. The biosphere is wonderful. To see that it is so is just as lovely.

Months ago I met a physicist who was a bit at a loss for words when I asked point blank on his views on the world-apparently-being-slowly-destroyed. fall magicFrom his response I gathered that there are movements in nature that we haven’t perceived yet. He seemed to tell me that science knows that what we have found out for now is not enough to speak of what’s real. I felt then that I was listening to a scientist who had been humbled by what he has so far perceived of the structure of nature. I also felt that there was a hint of naive hope in his tone. In turn, I, too, was humbled in that I saw my ‘greediness’ in wanting to put markers and pointers and enclosures to things and phenomena in accommodating them into my scheme of understanding.

I understood a bit more then of how I could not do that with Creation. Creation is awesome, and that’s why it’s beautiful. Something that leaves us awestruck isn’t something that can be easily boxed, a mountain village reflectednor can even be boxed at all. Life and living cannot be outlined just within sociological formulations, nor ideological dogmas, nor faith systems that render us constrained and betrayed. Especially that Creation is a reflection of God.

There’s got to be more to Creation than just objects that ‘need’ to be defined, classified, organized, and manipulated. In the phenomenon of the Cross is a picture that could help make it clear to us how radical the valuing of Life, of Being, is…

…may everyone of us find that which keeps us breathing, gives us space for growth, and so Live…

[Thank you to the webpages where I got the pictures above from. Peace.]           

Adam’s Song (Awit ng Mortal)

“Awit ng Mortal” is a Pilipino song, by Joey Ayala. Awit means song, and so the title can be translated as Song of the Mortal One, or Song of the Mortals. I render it as Adam’s Song because the story of Adam in Genesis is profoundly of one who came from dust and who is returning to dust. “Adam” is strictly not a proper name but is actually a generic term for “one [who is] from dust/ground/earth [= adamah]”. I thought of Adam since I felt that the title emphasizes mortality being a prominent description of humanity.

I especially like the song, both the melody and the lyrics. I want to try translate it into English so that I can share its thought to those who can’t understand our national language. Doing it word for word, or line for line, is rather difficult, awkward, so I kind of tried to get hold of my gut understanding of the statements. (Mr. Joey Ayala, sir, in case you come across this, I hope I did okay. Peace.) Here goes:

Ano ang sukat ng halaga ng isang buhay?
Kayamanan ba o di kaya ang pangalan?
Ano ang titimbang sa husto o kulang
Ng katuparan ng adhikain at paninindigan?
May gantimpala bang dapat pang asahan
Upang kumilos nang tama’t makatuwiran?

What dictates a person’s worth? Is it possessions? Is it reputation?

Against what should an endeavor be weighed? Against which should conviction be gauged? Must there be expected rewards for all good deeds?

Saglit lamang ang ating buhay,
Tilamsik sa dakilang apoy.
Ang bukas na nais mong makita
Ngayumpama’y simulan mo na.

Our lives are just ticks in time, flicks in that great flame; commence today the tomorrow that is your dream.

Ang bawa’t tibok ng iyong puso
Minsan lamang madarama.
Ito ang kumpas ng ating awit
Na sadyang may hangganan.

Each heartbeat happens only once. This beat is the rhythm of the song that is us; that which has an end to it.

May gantimpala bang dapat pang asahan
Upang kumilos nang tama’t makatuwiran?

Must there be expected rewards for all good deeds?

Kat’wan at isipa’y kukupas,
Sa lupa’y yayakap din.
Subali’t ang bunga ng iyong pamana’y
Higit pa sa pinagmulan.

We age, we falter, we’ll succumb to the earth; however, your legacy, in its fruition, will wax beyond you and where you have come from.

Saglit lamang ang ating buhay,
Tilamsik sa dakilang apoy.
Ang bukas na nais mong makita
Ngayumpama’y simulan mo na.

Our lives are just ticks in time, flicks in that great flame; commence today the tomorrow that is your dream.

hello there 🙂 Today is April 22, 2014 and I’m putting a link to this song’s melody that was uploaded by somebody on YouTube. The vocals is by Ms. Bayang Barrios, herself an accomplished music artist. Joey Ayala’s group that performed the song is called Joey Ayala at ang Bagong Lumad [“Joey Ayala and the new native”, for my lack of a better translation … or could also be “alter native”, which is a variant of “alter-native” and which speaks of the band’s genre, alternative music, and which also speaks of the band’s music’s message(s) to its audience. Moreover, I found a site of Ms. Bayang Barrios where you can read some interesting stuff about her:  http://www.bayangbarrios.com/bayang/bayang4.htm .

Here now is the meditative song of above …  Awit Ng Mortal.  Both links lead to the same page.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=mpOSZI-1ePI

or similarly:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpOSZI-1ePI

thanks again! ciao 🙂