The Philosopher's Stone
5 March 2021
saying peace
The Shape of Things
What is a circle? What is round?
A quarter rolling on the ground.
A wheel is a circle, so is the moon
A bottle cap or a big balloon.
What is a square, with sides the same?
The wooden board for a checker game.
A slice of cheese, a TV screen
A table napkin to keep you clean.
What is a rectangle, straight or tall?
The door that stands within your wall.
A dollar bill, a loaf of bread, the mattress lying on your bed.
What is a triangle, with sides of three?
A piece of pie for you and me.
A musical triangle, ding, ding, ding,
A slice of pizza with everything!
These are the shapes seen everywhere:
a triangle, rectangle, circle, square.
If you look closely where you’ve been,
You’ll surely see the shapes you’re in!
Meish Goldish
showing peace
Photo by Arthur Mazi on Unsplash
The Philosopher's Stone
The Deathly Hallows
doing peace
The theme today is Peace and Our Planet
The poem today is simple in its structure and a bit of fun. However, it is also, if you think about it, highlighting more important truths.
We can easily dismiss someone or something as unimportant. But there is always more to discover if we take the time to think and ask a few questions.
As the inspiration for her book of the same name J.K. Rowling draws on the ancient story of 'The Philosopher's Stone', the symbol of which are the three shapes of a circle, a square and a triangle. In the book (the bestselling book in the living history of any author by the way) J.K. Rowling adapted the image of 'The Philosopher's Stone' to create the sign of 'The Deathly Hallows'. The square is there as the single line (the square looked at from the side) which represents 'The elder wand'. The circle represents 'The Resurrection Stone'. The triangle represents 'The Cloak of Invisibility'.
These three basic shapes make up everything we see. A building or a bird. A palace or a plant. Too often we look but we don't see. The same is true of the people we see everyday. We can take people for granted and not appreciate that they, like everything else in the world, are a little more complicated than we may imagine.
Look for how these shapes (circle, square, triangle) are present in your environment right now. They don't have to be equal sided or perfect but you will see that everything is a variation of these basic shapes.
Make a visual image playing with these three shapes. You can draw free hand, capture some images digitally or cut and paste onto a piece of paper
There is an old saying 'putting a square peg in a round hole' to mean trying to make something fit when it doesn't. Have you ever felt that you were trying to 'fit in'? Have you ever tried to make others be something or do something that didn't work for them? Talk with a friend, teacher or small group about what it feels like not to fit in sometimes and what can be done about it.