Like an alien writing a message in their own symbols and language, I moved my Apple Pencil over my iPad Pro expressing my inner impulses. To me the result shows my kinship with nature and the cosmos resembling an infrared view of a deep space nebula with roots. Zoom in to explore the intriguing textures and lines meandering like roots underground.
This is available for walls, apparel, accessories, cases, bags and home decor at the shops linked to our visual arts page.
It seems that many of us have given up on “The Lord’s Prayer”. It has become a thoughtless mumble in a ritual that seems too removed from our main life. Many no longer know what The Lord’s Prayer is because their forebearers forgot about it already. In the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples to pray, the phrase “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” is key to what the prayer is about. Earth and heaven are to be together as one.
I’m not talking about making a utopia here as many have tried to do throughout history. As soon as people have started to build their version of heaven on earth problems have arisen like
- who is allowed in and how to qualify for that,
or
- do we try and pave all the streets with gold or just main street,
and
- won’t gold get too hot to walk on at mid-day?
Yeah, I guess we haven’t figured out what “heaven” is.
But we have a sense that obviously it must be good; that’s what we want: goodness, and we wish everyone could have that. The fact that there are some who wish certain others would burn in [the other place] tells us heaven has not been attained yet.
It is, however, remarkable that we would have the concept of the state of being in ultimate, complete goodness. That’s why we pray to God for it. We don’t know what it is, but there is an innate desire we don’t want to give away to cynicism. So, we pray into the Unknown.
When I pause to contemplate
- what we have discovered from millennia of trial and error
and
- by exploration of inner and outer space;
- what the accumulated wisdom of seekers in all cultures have left in messages for us on rocks, parchment, music notes, dance steps, celluloid and pixels;
I remember that something is progressing. Each of us particles is here to contribute to this mysterious flow – if we will.
The Will is being done
As the incomprehensible
Distances expanding
And objects too big to
Imagine by the
Infinitesimality
Of the creature typing this.
Watch for the Will to be done
In this particle wording
Intangible ideas
Mid faulty attempts to
Contain the Unknown
By explanations, concrete
Things on streets, housing,
Preferences of appetite,
And invented hierarchies.
Prayers for that Will to be done
Unknowingly call refining
Fire melting down the elements
Again to form the next
Iteration of goodness
More willing to blend
Tangible beauty
With ineffability.
Will that reality of
Wisdom to participate;
Move in the ways creating;
Do the works hidden
From most particles working
Their own revelations
Of the Will becoming
The whole Body in Spirit and Truth.
Mark R. Turner
January 22, 2024
