Here's a new piece of mine. Rather than flying, this one was important from a social and emotional point of view. Given my slow and hesitant adjustment to a new country, I have been thinking a lot about the difference between acceptance and tolerance, and how these ideas seem relevant to religion worldwide in particular.
The text on the wing of the piece, reproduced below, merges the opening lines of most major religious texts in the world. I tried to make it one story, which as I predicted was rather easy. More difficult was wording it in such a way that monotheist as well as polytheist beliefs could be accommodated.
One god, the true name, the creator, without fear, without hatred, timeless, self-existent, known by the master's grace, the good, the merciful, In the beginning created the heaven and the earth. The names of the deities that were born in the Plain of High Heaven when the Heaven and Earth began were Master-of-the-Center-of-Heaven, High-Producing-Wondrous, and Divine-Producing-Wondrous. The master said, 'Is it not pleasant to learn with a constant perseverance and application, that right faith, right knowledge and right conduct collectively are the path of liberation? After my sons assembled in the place of pilgrimage, desiring to fight, the bird of charming song, who mounts on god's sublimest spray, sweetly sings with accent clear and strong, "the way that can be told is not the eternal way."
The text on the wing of the piece, reproduced below, merges the opening lines of most major religious texts in the world. I tried to make it one story, which as I predicted was rather easy. More difficult was wording it in such a way that monotheist as well as polytheist beliefs could be accommodated.
One god, the true name, the creator, without fear, without hatred, timeless, self-existent, known by the master's grace, the good, the merciful, In the beginning created the heaven and the earth. The names of the deities that were born in the Plain of High Heaven when the Heaven and Earth began were Master-of-the-Center-of-Heaven, High-Producing-Wondrous, and Divine-Producing-Wondrous. The master said, 'Is it not pleasant to learn with a constant perseverance and application, that right faith, right knowledge and right conduct collectively are the path of liberation? After my sons assembled in the place of pilgrimage, desiring to fight, the bird of charming song, who mounts on god's sublimest spray, sweetly sings with accent clear and strong, "the way that can be told is not the eternal way."
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