I was a bit of a perfectionist when I was a boy, especially when it came to making things. Man, I’d get so upset at the slightest smudge on a picture or a misplaced blob of glue on a model airplane. Dad, in his attempts to console me, would just rub my head and remind me, “Son, a man on a galloping snail wouldn’t notice it.” Thanks Dad – such wise colloquialisms have stayed with me ever since I was knee-high to a grasshopper!

I have questions though: how fast does a galloping snail actually go? They might be super quick for all I know. And is the man just really really small or is the snail like massive? Because these things, I’m sure, would affect the extent to which he’d notice the smudges and blobs.

I must ask my Dad.

You see, I think it must be all about what we’re looking for and if we’re even able to give it a name. The American novelist Mary McCarthy once wrote, “There are no new truths, but only truths that have not been recognized by those who have perceived them without noticing.” We perceive things but do we actually notice them or recognize them? I guess we don’t know what we don’t know. On the other hand, we sometimes don’t know what we do know. And what happens when we don’t know that we do know what we don’t know we know?!!

Let’s take God, for example. God is Love. Is Love God? If you know Love, do you know God, even if you don’t know it is God? I don’t know…but I’m curious to find out!

Saintly Paul has a thing or two to say about this in his letter to the Romans, stuff about knowing God but not really treating him like God. Life, he suggests, tends to get a bit messy as a result. Knowing God, it seems, helps us get to know ourselves. Loving God helps us to love ourselves too. Wouldn’t that be nice?! 

I’m going to try to notice God a bit more, try to recognise him a little better, to slow down and take the time to really look for these truths that I’ve always perceived but never really noticed. Like when I look at a tree I see how wonderful God is to have made it and that he thinks I’m more valuable than the birds that nest in it and more beautiful than the flowers that grow around it. As Mary McCarthy goes on to say, “A truth is something that everyone can be shown to know and to have known, as people say, all along.” I guess we just need a little reminder every so often.

Maybe as I slow down I’ll begin to notice a few smudges or misplaced blobs. And maybe I’ll begin to love them too.

 

(Still, I’d be pretty keen to know what the man on the galloping snail has to say about it all? Any ideas?)