Friday 1 October 2010

Energy!

At Broad Marston we bake our own bread. In Exeter I used a bread machine, so this is an opportunity to bake bread properly. My first attempt wasn't bad, though I say so myself! It came out slightly denser than the previous baking, but looked like bread and tasted like bread. The physicality of kneading is good for me, as I live in my head for most of the time. Expending that energy makes me really feel that I am making something, and as Mary Bernard says, it is good for working out any frustrations!

Today at our corporate lectio divina we read: "The Lord replied, 'If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, "Be uprooted and planted in the sea", and it would obey you.'" Everyone had their mulberry tree story. Sadly mine was about the wonderful tree in the cloisters of Exeter Cathedral, which is to be cut down to make way for the relocated Cathedral shop. And my mind pottered along the route of physics and E=mc2. Suppose a green mustard seed weighs approximately 0.002 g, and the speed of light is 3*108 ms-1. Then the amount of energy in a mustard seed is 1.8*1011 J or 50 MWh, equivalent to the annual electricity consumption of about 8 people in the UK. One mustard seed could power almost the whole community! As for me, faith at present means being faced with a long journey, and taking the first step, and then the next step, and the next, and the next... without looking too far ahead.

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