I love to read about natural history of the earth. It comforts me to know that while my time on earth is finite, that life has gone on for eons, and will go on. So much activity goes on at microscopic and cosmic levels that I can only glean a bit of it from reading, listening and observing. When I was a youth, I was awed by a short movie shown in science class, Powers of Ten, made in about 1968 by American architect Charles Eames (1907-78) and his wife, the abstract painter Bernice Kaiser, who took the name Ray (1912-88). In the movie an imaginary camera zooms out into space, each ten second interval taking the viewer ten times farther until our galaxy is wee speck. The imaginary camera then enters the hand of a woman sleeping, with ten times more magnification for each ten seconds, ending with an atom in her DNA.
Back to art, the flowers in the image had brief lives, while the quartz was formed long ago by great forces in nature. The Christian faith has had two thousand years of history, growing and learning. Other world religions, too, have brought rich histories and insights to the world. May we all live in peace together.
A poem goes with the art:
A lily from the church garden,
Where bell flowers bob and nod
Crystal quartz, a cross
formed from your earth, Lord. - Nancy Lee 2005
