Fractals

March 2018

To begin, a little science. Some years ago I became aware of fractals, which are objects in which a part has the same character as the whole, whether they are seen from near or far. It is a strange thing to read or hear about, but we have all experienced them in our lives, from fern leaves to seashells, cauliflower to snowflakes, mountain ranges to galaxies!

A visual example (which is much easier to deal with!), and meaningful for us as Christians, is what a 7-year-old boy described as, “a cross within the cross within the cross within the cross within the cross!” Up close you see just a point, step back a bit and you see the point is the top of a cross, farther back and you see the cross is one of several crosses, until farthest away you see a mass of crosses. And if we go beyond that…a bigger pattern made up of this mass of crosses. Even the largest contains the smallest.

I offer this to suggest that when we are really close to something, we can only see as much as we can see, and that from a distance, we can see even more. And in faith, while we must trust in the vastness of God, we can see Jesus, who is the “image of the invisible God.” And so it is that on Good Friday, we’ll be leaving St. Luke’s on Seventh Street at noon to become more aware of the small crosses and large crosses that crucify people around the world  ̶  just like the image above.

For those of us at St. Paul's, aware of our church’s prognosis, it may be easy to see a cross looming. But it is Jesus who fills our lives, and his life and our lives are not just the cross. Rather, it is his life, death, and resurrection that gives us meaning and hope, even if sometimes the cross is all we can see.

Recently, on hearing of St. Paul's circumstances, a friend of the congregation, the Rev. Karen Moeschberger brought to my attention a hymn entitled, “In the Bulb There is a Flower, which goes:

In the bulb there is a flower,
in the seed, an apple tree,
in cocoons, a hidden promise:
butterflies will soon be free!
In the cold and snow of winter
there's a spring that waits to

   be,
unrevealed until its season,
something God alone can see.

There's a song in every silence,
seeking word and melody;
there's a dawn in every

   darkness,
bringing hope to you and me.
From the past will come the

   future;
what it holds, a mystery,
unrevealed until its season,
something God alone can see.
In our end is our beginning,
in our time, infinity;
in our doubt there is believing,
in our life, eternity,
in our death, a resurrection,
at the last, a victory,
unrevealed until its season,
something God alone can see.

There is what we can see, and there is more than we can see. We have to be responsive to what we is in front of us; as we approach Good Friday, we can’t deny the cross. At the same time, however, we have to be open to what may be revealed to us, bigger than what we could imagine. Resurrected life.

In the bulb, we can imagine a flower. In our doubt, can we believe that there is something ahead of us, “unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see”?

God is all in all,