Tiles of carnelian, lapis, and jade,
The muralist sets his picture
One centimeter at a time.
Every piece alone is precious;
Together they make a priceless whole.Not far from where I grew up, there was a muralist whose specialty was mosaic. He accepted commissions from all over the world and also collaborated with a number of famous artists on their murals and sculptures. He had bins and buckets full of all sorts of fascinating tiles. Some were red, blue, and yellow glass. Others were elaborately glazed ceramic. A few were stones like lapis, turquoise, malachite, and obsidian. Some were even mirrored with gold and silver, and these would shine out first whenever he would wash away the grout.
God may be in the details, but it is also important to know the big picture.
That is where the muralist is such a great example. He knew what the big picture had to be, and yet he had enough concentration to piece together enormous tableaus out of tiny square centimeters. That is knowing both the small and the big. Follow his example and you will never be petty; yet you will not lose sight of the relationship between the microcosmic and the macrocosmic.
“There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic.” — Anais Nin
“Each of us puts in one little stone, and then you get a great mosaic at the end.” — Alice Paul
“We’ll rebuild, of course, … But what made New Orleans is the polyglot, the tapestry, the mosaic, the gumbo. So the French Quarter gets most of the attention, but the Quarter feeds from the arteries of the neighborhoods.”
— Marc Morial
There are so many of us who are focused on that one little tile of our own lives. We don’t see how we fit with the other pieces around us, forming a much larger picture. We think the little pieces aren’t as important as we are, the much larger, richer pieces, but if we stepped back and looked at the whole picture, we would know that if the smallest piece falls out of place the picture becomes lesser for it. The mosaic of our society is large and rich, and all the pieces need to be firmly secured for the entire picture to work.
Being able to see and understand the relationship between things has been a really useful skill for me in all parts of my life. I see the whole picture as well as the pieces, and I have a fairly good understanding of how they work together.
In my work as a quality engineer, I’ve seen how important it is to pay attention to the smallest details, to catch and correct small problems before they develop into larger ones that are very expensive to repair, or can even completely disrupt the system.
In our society today, there are a number of very disturbing trends – the inequitable distribution of wealth, the enormous levels of debt we are piling up in terms of private, corporate and government debt, the huge sums of money we are spending on our military and the attempts to gut the support programs for the neediest among us. These are all very troubling and disturbing trends. Economically, there will probably be a crisis within the next few years, and those who are not prepared to face it will be the worst off. I wonder at those who want to cut off those lines of support, how they can think that hurting those in our society who can least afford it is a good thing, while giving tax cuts to those who don’t need them. It’s like polishing the prettiest tiles in the mosaic while the other pieces fall out – and the whole picture is less for it. Eventually, with the other pieces gone, those rich pretty tiles fall as well.
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