The Seventh Day of Christmas:

Genesis 2

1 THUS the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array. 2 By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. 3 And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating he had done. AMEN

Romans 1

19 Since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities --- his eternal power and divine nature --- have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. AMEN

Creatio Ex Nihilo

Offerings from the Seeker, the Lyricist, and the Prophet

by Jason Gillespie

Prologue

It’s All Too Much …

Origins. Beginnings. What does it matter? Ask your neighbor, who was adopted as an infant. Ask the parent who explains the “birds and the bees” to their inquisitive child. Ask why the ancients looked up, as much as they looked down. We cry out: “I want to know from where I began.” It’s all too much and never enough.

The Seeker observes and sees. The Lyricist writes and feels. The Prophet speaks and foretells. Each with the gift of revealing Truth. Not facts or evidence, as much as, revelation; and forever manifesting in the body, heart, mind, soul, and spirit of the finite creature God calls his own.

An “eternal” cosmos or was there a beginning? Expansion changes everything. That which expands must have a beginning. A balloon, a lung, a mind, each and all, expands from its source. Man concedes. God by any other name: The ‘Singularity’.

‘Nothing’. A word in search of relevance in a world and a cosmos of ‘somethings’. The dialectic goes like this: Nothing minus nothing will always = Nothing. And nothing minus something will always = Something. No matter how hard we search … Nothing cannot be found. If it’s hiding, it is still ‘Something’ … hiding.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep … Ge 1:1-2

Even the ‘void’ offers an ‘empty space’. It is something waiting to be filled with something else.

Conception bears witness. There is always something that begets something else. Gametes meet and produce a zygote. Something grows. Then that something grows into me, into you. Reality is something, becoming something else, ad infinitum.

Everything in a process of becoming.

And so, it is and always has been. AMEN

Act 1

Creation Dream

Serenity by the Sea by Kathleen Gillespie

The earthen substance beneath my feet has no memory. And yet, it testifies to the journey of over 7.5 billion human creatures that now call it home. Tera Firma. The only home we have ever had. We see it. Experience it. Touch it, sniff it and hear its rumblings. It provides. It protects. It is truly all in all.

Is it no wonder then, our indigenous ‘brothers and sisters’ revered it as Mother Earth? A mothering power emanating, pulsating … granting life from its depths:

The old people came literally to love the soil, and they sat or reclined on the ground with a feeling of being close to a mothering power. It was good for the skin to touch the earth, and the old people liked to remove their moccasins and walk with bare feet on the sacred earth. Their tipis were built upon the earth and their altars were made of earth. The birds that flew in the air came to rest upon the earth, and it was the final abiding place of all things that lived and grew. The soul was soothing, strengthening, cleansing, and healing.

This is why the old Indian still sits upon the earth instead of propping himself up and away from its life-giving forces. For him, to sit or lie upon the ground is to be able to think more deeply and to feel more keenly. He can see more clearly into the mysteries of life and come closer in kinship to other lives about him.

(Chief Luther Standing Bear - Teton Sioux, Born 1868)

A swirling, leaning, ball of rock and metal. Water layered on top like a cat’s eye marble.

Pan back further. A smaller ball of rock. White with shadows; its relief fuels the machinations of an inquisitive mind … of course … ‘a man in the moon.’ He provides the counterweight to keep everything exactly right. Seas held at bay as they swing up and down. Waves stray from their collective moorings as they lick the land. Retreat. Repeat.

A camera lens pans back from 3.7 billion miles; it took 17 years to get this photo op. In 1994, a human invention from 1977 is directed to turn its ‘head’ … to look and see … what has never been seen except from God’s high perch. Revealed in the vast void is ‘Us’ … a “pale blue dot”. A gazing view seen only by the Creator … until now. Even as I write, it journeys on into the mystery that is God’s creation:

Click Here

From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it’s different. Consider again that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

Easy to dismiss the power and beauty of Carl Sagan’s renderings as a Seeker. Religious culture, as usual, paints its own portrait of a man apart. Atheist. Crucify him! … Wait … What? … No!

Click Here

Act 2

Soul of a Man

Back on earth. Distractions from the Truth win the day. But even Lost Dogs (1996) understand what they see, why can’t we? Listen and hear … inhale … and … breath:

Politicians, morticians, philistines, homophobes

Skinheads, dead heads, tax evaders, street kids

Alcoholics, workaholics, wise guys, dimwits

Blue collars, white collars, war mongers, peaceniks

Breathe deep