Corona Virus and Time to Contemplate

Psalm 46:10 Be still, and know that I am God.

There is a beauty and clarity that comes from being still and waiting upon the Lord. This pandemic has caused difficulties, some minor and others of a more serious nature. Our problem is that we often expect instantaneous solutions to such challenges, forgetting that frequently the heavenly virtue of patience is required.

Please contemplate the following:

An artist usually looks at the space around an object in order to perceive the object more accurately. The background space helps define objects. In art terms it’s called negative and positive space. Some might think that quarantine is negative space, Is it Negative or Positive??? Consider this wisdom of the Sage:

We put thirty spokes together and call it a wheel;

But it is on the space where there is nothing that the usefulness of the wheel depends.

We turn clay to make a vessel;

But it is on the space where there is nothing that the usefulness of the vessel depends.

We pierce doors and windows to make a house;

And it is on these spaces where there is nothing that the usefulness of the house depends.

Therefore, just as we take advantage of what is, we should recognize the usefulness of what is not.

-Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, No. 11

I feel like we are all in a waiting mode.  I chose to think of this time as being like a caterpillar in a cocoon. Metamorphosis is taking place and soon things will be changed from a crawling creature to a flying butterfly!  This is a time to be useful, to be still…  I’m an artist not a Sage but might I add this sentence to the Taoist quote…

We sleep and dream:

But morning dawns and if rested the nothing of night is what the usefulness of day depends on.

Laura Lee Stay Bradshaw