God Is In The Details - Building A Mystery
This is going to be a rather long one.
There are experiences which instantly strike me as being true - true long before the first reactive, associative thought has had time to form itself in my mind.
A halo around the moon.
Pablo Casals, singing through the rosin, horse hair, cat gut and wood.
A single note from the horn of Miles Davis.
The innocence of a child.
I had the same immediate, wordless experience when I first heard “God is in the details”.
The phrase has been ascribed to the architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe but was probably not invented by him. ”The Devil is in the details” is a more cynical variant, implying that the details might cause failure. It has typically been associated with architecture or design but I have always thought it to be about creation in general.
We live inside a huge, evolving creation the details of which are continually flowing into us through our sense organs. They are the ultimate expression of all that lies beneath.
I notice a leaf on a tree. This time I stop for some reason. I look at the leaf. I see it’s veins. I pay closer attention. I see that the veins start at the stem and branch out. I pay closer attention. It comes to me that the leaf has the same pattern as the tree. The stem is like the trunk, the veins are like the branches. At each step my curiosity grows. I am drawn in. Why do they branch like that? Why are they green? I learn a little about photosynthesis. The pattern repeats in a new form.
The mystery deepens. I want to stay with it, to pay attention to it, to plumb the depths. And it’s through this opening, this outermost layer, the details, that I find my way in. It’s my only way in.
The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible. — Oscar Wilde
I am a design chauvinist. I believe that good design is magical and not to be lightly tinkered with. The difference between a great design and a lousy one is in the meshing of the thousand details that either fit or don’t, and the spirit of the passionate intellect that has tied them together, or tried. That’s why programming– or buying software– on the basis of “lists of features” is a doomed and misguided effort. The features can be thrown together, as in a garbage can, or carefully laid together and interwoven in elegant unification, as in APL, or the Forth language, or the game of chess. – Ted Nelson
My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind. – Albert Einstein
Whether we are interacting with an existing creation or creating something ourselves, attention to detail is key. Paying attention can be very very difficult and, in the beginning, also very tedious.
In Zen they say: If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, try it for eight, sixteen, thirty-two, and so on. Eventually one discovers that it’s not boring at all but very interesting. — John Cage’s restatement of the koan on boredom
Many of us are also deeply involved in our own creative process. Musicians, chefs, athletes, visual artists, martial artists, designers, architects and software developers engage in a daily struggle to pay attention. Once we commit to a creation we cannot get lazy. We cannot drift. The proof will be in the pudding.
Well those drifter’s days are past me now
I’ve got so much more to think about
Deadlines and commitments
What to leave in, what to leave out — Bob Seger
Cause you’re working
Building a mystery
Holding on and holding it in
Yeah you’re working
Building a mystery
And choosing so carefully — Sarah MacLachlan
When I asked my sweetheart how she understood “God is in the details”, she said, (only after first rephrasing it in true atheist fashion), that a really good meal not only expresses the hard work and talent of the chef but, more importantly, transmits the love, care and attention to detail that went into its preparation and presentation.
“No crooked table legs or ill-fitted drawers ever, I dare say, came out of the carpenter’s shop in Nazareth.” — Dorothy L.Sayers
As mothers and fathers we accept a solemn responsibility to love, respect and care for our children. It is the small things that they will remember forever.
It goes without saying that we have a responsibility to our children. We are responsible to our customers for the quality of what we produce. In a way, the tasks that we undertake are our children too.
We have a responsibility to ourselves to rightly use the gifts we have been given. But above all, we have a responsibility to that power and intelligence which, flowing through our hearts, bodies and minds, has resulted in the arising of these precious children and put them in our safekeeping.
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you. — Kahlil Gibran