Snowflakes and Shrines
It doesn’t snow much in my part of the world. We get a few flakes each year. Never enough to stick. Last winter a little snow was swirling around one afternoon. There wasn’t enough to show on the ground, but it was enough to draw a crowd of neighbors in South Texas.
It took about five minutes before someone said, "You know, they say no two snowflakes are exactly the same." The little crowd acknowledged this stunning truth with grunts, “yeps”, and solemn nods.
This observation doesn't excite me anymore.
I'd be properly impressed if someone WERE to find two snowflakes that were exactly alike. That would be news. That would be worth talking about.
For that matter, find me any two objects that are the same. I don’t think you can. Everything on earth seems to be a one-of-a-kind masterpiece.
Every grain of sand has an amazing story. Mountain rocks roll slowly down the river. Polished by water, they grind against one another, growing ever smaller over an unthinkable expanse of time. This one spent 200,000 years under a boulder. That one was plucked out of the river by a Neanderthal child and spent 100 millennia in a cave.
When they are finally small enough to be carried by the water, they are ejaculated into the ocean. They flow like milt, carried by the currents to end up on the beach and into your sand castle.
Talk about your Process Art. Whoever set this in motion was way, hey, hey, into the journey.
Zoom in on a tray of milled ball bearings, and you'll find that each is a moon, covered with silent gray hills and pitted with hollow craters. Shouldn’t each have its own name, like other moons? You know, out of respect.
If rarity brings value, how much for the grit under my mat? What will you give me for the leaf clinging to my daughter's sweater? Should we build a shrine to everything? Should every tin cup and beetle have its own grotto?
And how shall we build these shrines if the mortar is worth as much as the saint?
What does this mean? Is nothing a miracle, or is everything a stunning masterpiece?
The Preacher
8:24:06 AM 
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