Ritual

A child gets a haircut on a street in Hefei, Anhui province. It is believed to bring luck when one gets a haircut during the second day of the second Chinese lunar month, which is February 26.

REUTERS/Jianan Yu

Patterns

Swimmers prepare to participate in the opening ceremony of the UK Cold Water Swimming Championships at Tooting Bec Lido in London.

REUTERS/Kieran Doherty

Laborers

A man pans for gold on a riverside in Iga Barriere, Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Photograph: Finbarr O'Reilly/Reuters

Patterns

Long lines form for a government job fair at the Atlanta Federal Centre.

Rich Addicks/AP

Offering

Worshipers carry a boat containing offerings for Iemanja, the Afro-Brazilian goddess of the sea, at Ramirez beach in Montevideo. Every year sweets, perfumes, fruits and imitation jewellery are offered to the Goddess.

REUTERS/Andres Stapff

Patterns

Chairs lined up before the Marc Jacobs Fall 2009 collection, New York Fashion Week.

REUTERS/Eric Thayer

Money Changer

A money changer poses for a portrait on a street corner in Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo.

Finbarr O’Reilly/REU

Patterns

A worker puts finishing touches to masks made in the likeness of President Barack Obama at a costume factory assembly line in a suburb of Rio de Janeiro. A total of 12,000 Obama masks will be made for the upcoming 'Brazil Carnaval' festival from February 20 to 22.

REUTERS/Bruno Domingos

Laborers

A woman and her daughter carry sacks of mud in order to make pottery in Chinautla, Guatemala.

Eitan Abramovich/AFP

Ecological injustice

This computer-generated image, released by the European Space Agency, illlustrates the 12,000 objects in orbit around the Earth.

ESA/AFP/Getty Images

Worship

Worshippers light candles in jars of honey during a holy mass for St. Haralambos' Day in Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria. St. Haralambos is a martyr and miracle-worker in the Greek Orthodox tradition.

Vassil Donev/EPA

Patterns

A Tibetan monk walks near a monastery in Tongren, Qinghai province, where monks and pilgrims are gathering to celebrate Monlam, or the Great Prayer Festival, one of the most important festivals in Tibetan Buddhism.

Reinhard Krause/Reuters

Joy

Thirteen panda cubs born in 2008 pose for a group photo with their keepers at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding in Chengdu, southwest China's Sichuan province, January 21 2009. All of them will be greeting the public during the Spring Festival after months of close care in nurseries.

Patterns

Kunming, China: A man fishes on the banks of the Dianchi lake

Kim Kyung-hoon/Reuters

Hierarchy

Clergy attend the crowning of the Patriarch Kirill as the 16th leader of the Russian Orthodox church.

Sergei Karpukhin/Reuters

Son of God

This portrait of Jesus was created by producers of the BBC program "Son of God," who took into account medical, archeological, and historical evidence from the time of Jesus. They worked with a 1st-century male skull found in Israel.

Using a plaster cast of the skull, forensic medical artist Richard Neave [University of Manchester] reconstructed the face by building up layers of clay to represent muscle, fat and skin. Details such as the hair were decided by considering the hair of men in the Middle East, which tends to be thick, dark and curly, together with hairstyles current in the time of Jesus. The final image of Christ’s head was produced as a 3D computer model.

In reconstructing this head, we are not claiming that this is exactly Jesus’ face, but we are trying to counteract all of those bad images of blond-haired, blue-eyed Jesuses running around in Hollywood productions.” - Joe Zias, Israeli archaeologist

Patterns

A man walks on an illuminated walkway in Tokyo January 19, 2009.

REUTERS/Toru Hanai (JAPAN)

Goddess

An artist blows gold powder paint on an idol of Hindu Goddess Laxmi, goddess of wealth.

REUTERS/Ajay Verma

Patterns

Frost forms on a window during cold winter weather in New York state.

David Duprey/AP

Good and faithful servants

Women pray at a tomb for dead guide dogs in Sapparo, Japan.

Kim Kyung-hoon/Reuters

Patterns

Paramilitary soldiers march during the final full dress rehearsal for the Indian Republic Day parade.

Raveendran/AFP/Getty Images

Ecological injustice

A sculpture of a stranded polar bear and its cub on the Thames in London. The sculpture is intended to raise awareness of melting ice caps and launch the new Natural History TV channel Eden.

Shaun Curry/AFP/Getty

Ecological injustice

Indigenous people from several tribes march to bring saving the Amazon forest to the world's attention. Taken at the World Social Forum, Belem, Brazil.

Vanderlei Almeida/AFP/Getty Images

Poetry and prayer

Both poetry and prayer have the ability to move the imagination into a meditative space. Poetry, like prayer, can alter our perceptions, deepen our appreciation of the commonplace, and collapse the distance between everyday life and a more numinous experience. Prayer, like poetry, is a deeply imaginal experience that opens us to mystery, to the ineffable by allowing us a deeper felt sense of the created world.

Wengen, Switzerland: Stars shine above the mountains Eiger, Moench and Jungfrau
Photograph: Alessandro Della Bella/EPA

Patterns

A farmer makes her way through heavy snow storms near Lanark, Scotland.

David Cheskin/PA

Beauty

Red stag - Red Mist, by Graeme Purdy, winner of the British Deer Society’s Second Open International Photographic Competition.