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Seeing the Small is Insight

Steinbeck once said he was born lost and had no interest in being found. I think I understand that comment.

I feel that way at times. Well, in the sense that it’s nice now and then to mentally, and if possible, physically, get lost and leave the chaos and the absurdity of the nonsense around us.

The moral and social fabric of our country is in alarming need of repair. One can only stand staring at it for so long before panic sets in and the ground opens up in some yawning gloom of darkness.

I picked up an acorn cap the other day while walking. You know that little textured hat that sits on an acorn? They are elaborately constructed if you take the time to look at them. And they all fit so perfectly on top of the acorn. It’s quite a tiny miracle when you realize that the acorn produces an oak tree.

The ancient mystics wrote, “Seeing the small is insight.” What could we learn from that?

We live in an obsession with bigness. Everything is bigger in Texas, we say. Why is that impressive? We have big buildings in big cities and though they are often incredible to look at, so what? When the Twin Towers were destroyed by terrorists we had to build a building even bigger. Why? Wouldn’t the 911 Memorial with its quiet, majestic fountain have been enough?

Did we have to cover our insecurity with a Tower of Babel? Is the giant Freedom Tower, the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere, that replaced the Twin Towers in New York City, a display of our ingenuity? Or is it an image of our fears of being threatened again?

Today, we have our giant missiles and huge machines of warfare that cost billions of dollars to maintain and operate. Are they necessary? What do they tell us about ourselves?

I read the other day where the Ford Motor Company will stop making compact cars and sedans other than the Ford Mustang. Every other vehicle they make will be an SUV or a truck. Smaller is out.

What is our compulsion with bigness? Is it supposed to somehow canopy our smallness? Are we not able to live in the reality of our genuine human limits? We do have them.

This is not to in any way diminish our potential, or to stop the progress of imagination and ingenuity. It is simply to realize there are times when we need to honor what is small and revere it and not be threatened by our own littleness in the context of our larger world. We are to be caretakers of it, not owners.

Are we in danger of experiencing what poet Adrienne Rich called “a life of passive drifting and dispersal of energies” because we want too much, because we crave the bigness of things instead of an expansive interior life?

Might the realization of our smallness be forced upon us? The World Health Organization (WHO) predicts a mysterious contagion is out there and it might eventually kill 30 million people across the world. It's called "Disease X" because they haven't yet identified it. But they believe it is coming. We have been able to contain the Ebola virus, MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome), SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome), and the ZIKA virus. But the WHO says this new one has the potential of creating a catastrophic international epidemic.

Could such a disaster bring us all down to size?

Rumi wrote, “There are a hundred ways to kneel and kiss the ground.” All of them put us in touch with an extraordinary grandeur beyond ourselves.

Pick up an acorn and study its cap. Perhaps it would be a good thing to identify with it, to get lost for a spell in our smallness. So that before we are awed by a tree we understand the value of a seed.

© 2018 Timothy Moody

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