Friday, January 04, 2008

Fibonacci on my Birthday

Well, if this wasn't a nice birthday surprise. I have long preached the Fibonacci sequence, the Fibonacci curve, as if I had made it up myself. Probably many of my listeners thought so, too. Relationships in nature follow a predictable sequence described by the Italian mathemetician Fibonacci (I doubt if I have spelled his name correctly). The ratio is 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, etc. ad infinitum. You can see it in everything from the milky way to the trail of a sidewinder in the sand. The bones of the human body relate to one another this way. Look at your own fingers to see it; the smallest joint is the smallest, the second twice that size, and the longest is the length of the first two combined. I have always been fascinated by this.

This afternoon, just as it was getting dark and I opened the door to let the dogs out, there it was. The wind had swirled the snow into a perfect Fibonacci curve and left it for me. There is the shape of a snail shell and the shape of the universe. There is the perfect order of things, consistent in all that lives, breathes, and simply exists in our human awareness.

It's humbling to see such an all-pervasive truth that has nothing to do with human initiative, and also comforting that we are part of something so huge we can't envision it. God, specific to this planet if He depends on human beings, apparently CAN make a rock so big He can't lift it.
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2 comments:

Rabea said...

Cheri I love your winter pictures..I think they'll make great paintings!!

LiberryAir said...

Happy Birthday!