To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour
--William Blake

Check out this video of a starling murmuration:

Each starling is a data point that is constantly reacting and changing and is a part of a whole. Starlings can just do this. How can I be a data point that is also the change and a part of a whole?

I was talking with someone about Katy Schalla Lesiak and Bjorn Westgard’s podcast The Stories that Data Tell saying, I wonder if and how God is in data?' They were reminded of a moment they had looking out at the ocean thinking about it as an infinite number of data points rolling with and in the waves. I was thinking about the movie the matrix coupled with a line from the William Blake poem above and wondering how maybe so many things in nature are millions of data points that we perceive as a whole and present as a flower or a waterfall or the wind.

I am continually connecting the To Get to the Other Side series to where it began with Erin Tripolino’s sharing of Adrienne Maree Brown’s Emergent Strategy. She says,

[Emergence] is another way of speaking about the connective tissue of all that exists --the way, the Tao, the force, change, God/dess, life. Birds flocking, cells splitting, fungi whispering underground.

Adrienne Maree Brown also quoted Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower,

All that you touch
You change
All that you change
Changes you
The only lasting truth
Is change
God is change

I read these and think about my friend talking about the change/data/god within the ocean and find comfort. God is change. The only lasting truth is change. Watching nature constantly react and change in very small movements that create systems and patterns like ocean waves beating up against a shore or a starling murmuration, I feel held and connected to God in everyday encounters and even the natural rhythms in me. Trees are so damn good at being trees, and I can connect to that same energy that lives in me and be a damn good Maia.

This is my prayer and where I start today.