365 Project Day 167: the wonder of fractals

Canon 5D Mark ll, 100  2.8 macro, 2.8 shutter, 1/250 shutter, 100 ISO

We stood out in the warm magical light, studying this delicate wonder. The Lace of Queen Anne. She, my middle child, but not mediocre in any way, shape, or form, she asks me this question.” Do you know what a fractal is, Mama?” She is 21, and still calls me Mama. My heart warms and turns in her direction. ” A what?” I answer in the form of a question. ” A fractal”, she almost sings it, as if the word itself is as wonderful as her widening blue eyes when she says it. Her wonder and curiosity have endured and increased as she has grown into a woman. This will forever make her irresistible to everyone she meets. And young. She will be a child at heart forever with this gift. This desire to discover and uncover, to relish learning as if it were something delicious to eat.

She tells me, ” a fractal is… a shape that replicates itself in similar patterns on a continuing smaller scale”. “Ohhh,” I marvel. This coming from my English major. My writer child, not my science child. She is spellbound studying the flower. I am too, studying her.  Then, I look at the flower, the one named after the Lace of Queen Anne. There is a little brownish-red dot in the middle of each cluster, where she is said to have pricked her finger while tatting her lace. It is a marvelously intricate creation. So much like its Creator. Just when you think you have come to the end, you are at the beginning of a whole new world, each more exquisite than the last.

In the warm light, the little petals look like tiny butterflies descending on stems stretching to meet them. So lovely. I am humbled again by the greatness of my God who so extravagantly pours out His creativity and love into the smallest places. How could I ever doubt His love for me?

I have found Him in the beauty of a fractal, and wonder of my daughter’s bright eyes. Perhaps He found me first.

1 John 4:19 ~ “We love because he first loved us.”