Progymnasmata

. . . . I saw a small English sparrow gathering some fluff for a nest. The fluff looked like it came from the lining of someone's old winter coat. And I thought how appropriate the metaphor was: a small bird plucking a piece of winter raiment. . . .white, raged and torn to line the inner shell of its spring nest. The artifacts of past seasons build the warmth of today.

All is liquid in nature, and the seasons tumble into each other as though there were really no season at all -- that all seasons are really just collections of the previous day made new again through creative use.

There is always an element of surprise in nature that is illogically balanced with a still calm. Science, with its fear and trembling about things that cannot move tries so busily cover the living myth of the natural world. For myth and the unnameable spirit doesn't move. And for science, if it doesn't move, it cannot be. In a way, science is like many ancient predators -- it can only detect movement. To stillness it is blind.

Indeed, all sciences trace the movement of objects -- sound moves. Light, animals, viruses, plants, even stones and earth move. Ice moves. And water moves. Blood moves as do chemicals, stars and space. So do bridges, buildings and roads.

I like science for this purpose. In many ways, I am sure that my eyes too are trained for movement. What could I know of the sparrow, if I hadn't seen her fly about?

But, as is often noted by others far wiser than I, science cannot measure the holy stillness of a moment. . . a moment when you feel as though time is an illusory construct set in place to give pace and steps to stillness.

How can we see what has lain still forever?