Wednesday, January 4, 2012

spiritual mathematics

I've decided to make some prayer flags to hang in my house.  I used to hang a Papel Picado I got in Mexico years ago.....it's a hand cut white tissue banner and it's lovely but I'm wanting something I make with my own two hands, something that helps me connect more with my creative center.  Wandering through this year end/year beginning time of turning always moves me on some deep level.  So I'm off to the studio today but first I want to share part of a poem I read  last night.  I found it in a book I've been so immersed in....staying up much too late reading this one.  It's called Acedia & Me, a Marriage, Monks and a Writer's Life by Kathleen Norris.

The Higher Arithmetic
by David J. Dwyer

In heaven, I do not know that there are angels,
but I know that there are numbers there, and light.
(Arithmetic and heaven are both uncountably
full of light.)  Inaccessible cardinals, there,
will lord it over mere infinities;
the naturals will dance among the reals...

Apart from numbers, how little we know.

There is no largest prime.  The Halting Problem
is formally undecidable.  Every subset
of a well-ordered set is well-ordered itself.  And so on....

Such things are true, even easy to prove.
Are there uncountably more, unknowably other
true things in the world?

2 comments:

Brigid said...

I'm glad you're posting - I love hearing what you have to say!

I sometimes like to bring projects when it's my turn to do the reflection at the beginning of our staff meetings. a couple months ago I brought in some prayer flags, explained my understanding of what they're about, and then we collaged our prayers onto them and hung them out in the deck garden. the next time I went out there they were gone - I'm guessing one of the men took them for decoration. that thought pleases me - our prayers blessing an apartment and helping a formerly homeless man make his apartment feel more like home.

I wonder who your prayer flags will bless. because you are a blessing there is no doubt in my mind that they will do so for someone.

Marny said...

Beautiful words and beautiful garden. Keep it coming