Wednesday 20 March 2013



5...IN THE BEGINNING
[Based on an imaginative reading of GEN 1 & 2. Read more there.]
Long ago, in the very beginning, before writing, or books, newspapers, telephones of any kind, TV, computers, the Internet, Face-book, U-tube, I-pads & Kindles, etc. there is God. Only God. Then, one day (though days don't actually exist yet!) God, who has a really great imagination, decides to tell a story. Imagine a Universe into being. Tell a whole Universe into happening. Lock, stock, & barrel. Imagine it all into being. Imagine everybody into being. Beginning with Light. Separating it from the darkness & chaos that is all that exists before. (Though time as we know it doesn't exist yet either!) Some believe God creates from that light the angels we come across in a lot of the stories. (Though creating angels from light is only hinted at in this Book of Beginnings.) But angels are Messengers of light. Messengers to do God's bidding. To go between God & the Creation as God makes it. Especially between God & humans. Angels can still be like the beams of light they're made from, while others appear in human form, & humans too, do God’s bidding as angels. We’ll come across them all. Often.

Once God tells humans into the story & onto the scene they find they need someone to talk to. Scientists tell us human life originated in today's Africa, but the biblical writers set it in the 'Middle East' they know. Where they tell their stories into being. First people talk with God. From their spirit. They learn, too, to make signs & sounds other humans can understand. Learn to form words, join them together in stories. Just little ones, at first. About things they need, something that's happened, something they're doing. Gradually they become better at speaking to each other, listening, & understanding too. Sometimes, unawares, they even talk with angels! But sometimes they forget, & leave God out of their conversations. Then God is lonely.

Life is much slower than now, though busy enough in those days. (There are days by now.) When the days' work of catching food, finding or building shelter, keeping out of the way of animals or people bigger & stronger than themselves is done, people take time to tell stories. About themselves & what’s happened today. Listen to other people's stories about their day too. And they tell their stories to God, & about God. About the rest of the Creation they see round them, too. Even if they don't always understand what they see, whom they meet, what they experience. Stories begin to take shape as they are passed around from person to person, family to family, clan to clan, even country to country - though there are no 'countries' as we know them yet.

Which brings us to a good starting place for the stories our earliest spiritual ancestors tell. Those Hebrew rellies of ours, who, thankfully, have left us their God stories. Imagine if you can: One night round a camp-fire in a cave in a cliff face, or is it out in the desert sands in front of a makeshift tent, someone asks what may be the world's First Really Big Question. Perhaps it's a child before they are sent off to bed. Maybe it's a grown-up, but it's often a child who asks the really important questions if only we'll take them seriously! This First Really Big Question may have been, "Where do we all come from?" There is a deep silence that lasts for a long, long time. Maybe the question isn't even answered that night. Perhaps it has to wait for another night, or another camp-fire in another place, who knows? But at last someone gives an answer that goes something like….But that’s another story….