The Gospel reading for this Sunday says that the Kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed (Matthew 13:31). How will we be able to recognise the Kingdom of Heaven in something as tiny and apparently insignificant as a mustard seed? To quote the poet William Blake, 'how can we see a world in a grain of sand, and heaven in a wild flower; hold infinity in the palm of our hand and eternity in an hour?' There is a lesson we can learn from Marcel Proust which can be summed up in a few words: 'slow down', or in his original French, 'N'allez pas trop vite.' Proust was unable to work due to ill health and was at home with his mother on sick leave for several years. He wrote that the 'happiness that may emerge from taking a second look reveals the extent to which our dissatisfactions may be the result of failing to look properly at our lives rather than the result of anything inherently deficient about them' (Taken from Alan de Botton's How Proust Can Change Your Life)

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