Category: Art

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That Hideous Strength Read-along: The Setup

In Chapters 1-4, we situate ourselves in a time and place: modern Britain sometime in the 1950s, with the memory of World War II’s devastation fresh and vivid.

The action takes place at three fictional locations: Edgetow, a university town similar to Cambridge, but smaller; St. Anne’s-on-the-Hill, a nearby village; and Belbury, a village in the opposite direction, currently undergoing a process of modernization.  The plot is immediately tangled in University politics, so it helps to know that the University of Edgetow is composed of four separate colleges, each with its own administration and disciplines .  Bracton College is the one that will concern us, because of the characters associated with it.  In these first chapters Lewis, like any good novelist, is introducing his major characters and moving the conflict elements into place—like setting up a chessboard and marking out a strategy.  The problem for contemporary readers is that he takes an awfully long time to do it and assumes a literary and history background that most Americans don’t have.  So here, with the help of notes obtained from the Lewisiana website, are a few pointers.

CHAPTER ONE: SALE OF COLLEGE PROPERTY

1.1 Jane Tudor Studdock, a thoroughly modern post-war young woman, is at the beginning of a marriage that has already proved disappointing.  The words she recalls in the first paragraph are from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, the traditional ringing tones of which contrast sharply with Jane’s “improved” attitudes.  She’s not a believer, but Anglicanism was the state religion (still is) with some authority over civil institutions like marriage.  The clash between tradition and fashion sets Lewis’s theme, and Jane’s disturbing dream puts the plot in motion.  She and her husband Mark will be the contrasting poles between which the action will shift and build.

The title page of Bracton’s book, which fellows of his namesake college would have done well to heed

1.2 Mark Studdock is intent on advancing his academic career.  He’s a sociologist, a relatively new field of study at the time, and Lewis doesn’t seem to think much of it.  Mark’s conversation with Curry shows how the academic world (then and now) is obsessed with position: the whole of point of an academic career is levering oneself into a cushy sinecure where one can collect a handsome salary without doing a lot of work (nothing has changes).  Henry de Bracton (ca. 1250), for whom Mark’s college is named, was the author of a book on common law, in which he argued that secular authority is subject to the law.  This also plays into Lewis’s theme.  If you haven’t read Out of the Silent Planet, it’s important to know that Dick Devine (Lord Feverstone), whom Curry mentions as the one who got Mark his position, is the same Devine who accompanied Drs. Westin and Ransom on their trip to Mars.

1.3 This is a lovely section that you can feel free to skip, because there’s a lot of history and atmosphere that you may not be susceptible to at this point.  Suffice it to say that Bragton Wood, a small enclosure within the college, is redolent with mystery as well as history, because it’s the location of “Merlin’s well.”  Merlin is not just a character in the Arthur legends, but rather the character around whom the legends collected.  The earliest references to him (ca. 800 AD) suggest that he had no father, giving rise to the rumor that he was the devil’s son.  More of this later.  What Lewis suggests in this chapter is that the College, feverishly modernizing, is sitting on a vast reserve of ancient power and knowledge that will not be swept aside.*

1.4 Lewis draws this chapter out so long it’s like you’re sitting in on an actual college meeting!  But it’s worth reading for the clever way in which the “progressive” element maneuvers the fellows into voting to sell Bragdon Wood–a sale they would never have approved on a straightforward vote.  This section also introduces the National Institute of Co-ordinated Experiments, or N.I.C.E., the collective villain of the piece. (Lewis obviously named the Institute with the acronym in mind, but it’s worth a mention that the UK’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, a division of its National Health Service, also takes the acronym NICE.)  Why does the N.I.C.E. want Bragdon Wood?  That’s the question . . .

1.5 Introducing Dr. and Mrs. Cecil Dimble, sympathetic characters who already have a connection with Jane.  They happen to live on Bracton College property, though Dimble teaches at another college.  The couple have recently learned that their lease is not being renewed, no telling why.  Notice how the tension slowly builds as change comes quickly to this sleepy little town, and how the Arthur legend comes up again in the conversation over tea.

*The heedless modernization Lewis saw in the fifties–or actually after the first World War–came into its own during the sixties.  He pictures the change being wrought by an axis of government and academic bureaucracy; he might not have foreseen the wave of radicalism that hit college campuses in the mid-sixties, fueled (in America) by the Civil Rights movement and the VietNam war.  But it was brilliant of him to perceive the corruption of the University as the eventual collapse of civilization.

CHAPTER TWO: DINNER WITH THE SUB-WARDEN

2.1  Non-olet is Latin for “it doesn’t stink,” ascribed to Emperor Vespasian’s reference to tax proceeds from public toilets.  The Sub-warden, remember, is Curry; the college bursar (treasurer) is Busby: these are two Bracton hot-shots who will be edged out of prominence as Lord Feverstone circles like a shark around Mark.  Notice his mention of Dr. Westin, the antagonist of Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra.  The “respectable Cambridge don” is Dr. Ransom, hero of those books. Feverstone’s talk of “taking charge of our destiny” is exactly what some contemporary scientists–as well as futuristic entrepreneurs like Elon Musk–mean by taking control of evolution.  The catchword today is “transhumanism.”  The theme is coming clearer now, and Mark will not be able to claim that he wasn’t warned.

2.2 and 2.3  Jane has another dream; her fear grows even as she despises herself for it.  Mark is totally out of his element with her.  We will see them together only one other time (briefly) during the course of the novel, and it’s interesting analyze their relationship here: what are the danger signs you see?  Have you noticed anything similar in couples you know?  Remember that Jane and Mark are the two poles of the narrative: the action will shift back and forth between them, with ever-growing light and ever-increasing darkness.

2.4   Mark motors to Belbury, N.I.C.E. headquarters, with Feverstone: “a big man driving a big car to somewhere where they would find big stuff going on.  And he, Mark, was to be in it all.”  Already we’ve seen Mark’s hunger to be in the inner circle, a lust that goes back to high school for almost everybody—I can certainly sympathize.  Incidentally, Lewis’s description of the sights may go on too long here, but I love his hinting at the ineffable potential of passing scenery: it’s like peeking into lighted windows as you walk by them.  Belbury might have been based on Blewbury, a village south of Oxford that became the site of the first nuclear reactor in Europe.

The picturesque side of Blewbury: doomed by forward-thinking bureaucrats?

CHAPTER THREE: BELBURY AND ST. ANNE’S-ON-THE-HILL

3.1 and 3.2  Out of the frying pan, into the fire, though Mark recognizes only that he must find his way to the real power source here, just as he did at Bracton College.  He is first introduced to John Wither, Deputy Director of N.I.C.E. who can’t seem to direct a cogent thought.  William Hingest, whom Mark knew at Bracton, strikes the first sour note.  Crosser and Steele are the kind of mediocre talents that bureaucracy thrives on, and Professor Filostrato may be one of the inner circle.

3.3  Meanwhile, at St. Anne’s, Jane meets Camilla Denniston (whose husband was mentioned in 1.2 as Mark’s rival for his fellowship), and Grace Ironwood, to whom she forms an immediate dislike.  Why?  What is it in Jane’s character that reacts negatively to Miss Ironwood’s?

3.4  Mark’s introduction to “Fairy” Hardcastle, one of Lewis’s more vivid characters.  She’s chief of the Institute’s police, and why should a government institution need its own law enforcement?  That should raise questions right away, as it does for Dr. Hingest, but Mark falls in with the line that the work is too vital, though controversial, to lack protection.  (By the way, did you know the the U. S. Department of Education has its own swat team?  Would it be amiss to wonder why . . . ?)

3.5  The real trouble begins.

CHAPTER FOUR: THE LIQUIDATION OF ANACHRONISM

The title is a mouthful, referring to modernism’s goal of purging the past, along with its obscure symbolism and burdensome rules.  This is a major theme of The Abolition of Man (see my first post on that a week from today).

4.1 and 4.2  The N.I.C.E. is demonstrating the swagger of Nazi hordes, an all-too-recent memory.  Mrs. Dingle’s description of their mowing down the woods compares to the murder of the trees from Narnia’s Last Battle.  I’m intrigued by her question, “do human beings really like being happy?”  A lot of us certainly enjoy being angry, or feeling put upon (speaking for myself).

4.3  Mark shares a morning stroll with the Reverend John Straik, whose presence at the Institute is a mystery.  Isn’t modern science supposed to root out fire-and-brimstone religious fanatics such as this?  I can’t think of a contemporary parallel to Straik (can you?), but he’s not the only one to mold the image of Christ to his own inclination.  Softer forms of Christianity have played in to hands of power often enough, as the National Church did in Hitler’s time.  Notice Mark’s acute embarrassment “at the name of Jesus”—love it!  The name of Jesus was, is, and will always be offensive: a “stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense.”

4.4  Foul play; your suspicions should be raised.  I love the last paragraph!

4.5  All Jane wants is “to be left alone.”  This was Lewis’s own desire, as described in Surprised by Joy.  Is this reasonable?  Is it possible?

4.6  The proposed “liquidation” of Cure Hardy reflects what is going to happen to Bracton Wood.  It goes on a little too long; you can get the sense by skimming.  Some redeeming aspects of Mark’s character emerge here, and a good thing too; major characters need to be somewhat sympathetic.  What are these redeeming features?  Notice how his field (sociology) concentrates on group identity rather than individual, exactly as political correctness does today.

4.7  This scene is just devastating: the colleges progressives have sown the wind and now reap the whirlwind of mindless destruction: the “liquidation of anachronism,” indeed.  Notice how Mark is being maneuvered from afar—the inner circle he craves membership in is advancing him like a chess piece.

Christ College dining hall–might that be the famous East Window, in which Henrietta Maria had cut her name with a diamond?
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Creation, Day Seven: The Temple

Then the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.  And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the Sabbath day from all the work he had done.  So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation.  Genesis 2:1-3

Jack’s seventh-day dream

It’s late Saturday afternoon in Pleasant Valley subdivision and Jack Johnson is relaxing, remote in hand, in his new Laz-E-Boy recliner with the tweed upholstery that complements the carpet.  His wife is cooking up a stir-fry in the kitchen, and though he would prefer steaks or hamburgers, he didn’t volunteer to man the grill.  So he will take the consequences, which aren’t that bad.  She uses a lot of garlic, and that’s some compensation.  Also long-grain brown rice with that full-bodied nutty smell that could almost tempt him to vegetarianism if it weren’t for things like grilled hamburgers.  Or bacon.  Ah, bacon . . . He had some for breakfast this morning, and he could write a poem about it, if he were a poet.  Were I of poetic mind,/ What excellencies might I find/ In thy tender waves of salt and crunch/ That beckon me to munch a bunch—

Ow.  What’s that in his jaw?  Lower right molar?  Is his toothache coming back?

Jack turns his head to ease the pressure. The sounds of his children drift through the open window from the driveway, where they’re playing pick-up basketball with some neighbor kids.  At least, 10-year-old Ashley is trying to play.  Jack can tell from her piping tones that Calvin lets her take a shot now and then.  Cal is a good kid, for a teenager.  They’re both good kids.  Thump.  Thump.  Thump.  Clutter-clutter-CHING!  “Two points!  Lay it up, Ash.”

Calvin’s voice cracks a little on the “up.”  Jack has to smile, remembering himself at fourteen.  Wouldn’t repeat it, but there’s a touching vulnerability about—

Ouch.  He shifts in his char again.  Might need to set up a dentist appointment tomorrow.  Hates to go, of course—who enjoys going to the dentist?  But sooner or later . . .

From the kitchen, on the classic rock station Julia is listening to, comes the flat-string cadence of an unmistakable rhythm—bum-bum-bum-ba-dum, bum-bum-bum-ba-dum—followed by a catchy melody he can’t help humming: “. . . lookin’ out my back door.”  Boy, that takes him back.  Summer nights down by the river, hot girls and cold beer; his foot is tapping out the rhythm to John Fogarty’s plangent tone: “Just got back from Illinois . . .”

Julia echoes from the kitchen.  He pictures her swaying in time to the music, her hips moving in that cute, innocently suggestive way that sometimes puts ideas in his head—

The remote bounces off the carpet as Jack clutches his jaw.  That does it.  First thing tomorrow, he’s calling Dr. Groves and demanding to get in.  Or if they say they’re full, he’ll just show up in the waiting room and tell them he’s not leaving until–

“Argh!”  His recliner bolts upright as Jack doubles over.  Pain rips through all other sensations; everything that pleased him thirty seconds ago now mocks him.  Crisp bacon, lilac blooms, plush pillows, fond memories, love for his wife and children—mean nothing!  Pain chomps through the veneer of his peaceful life with jagged teeth.  He clutches his head, choking back a scream . . . .

. . . and tumbles headfirst into a dream.  Or is he awake?  The pain is certainly awake, stomping gleefully on all his nerves like a demented two-year-old.

But maybe that’s the wrong way to think of it.  This is all going on inside his own body, after all.  The pain is part of him.

No, the pain is you.  You are the pain.

Who said that?  Did he say that?  It’s not the kind of thing he’s apt to say.  His conversation is more on the order of, Has anybody seen the hammer? or, How about those Raiders?

At any rate, it doesn’t hurt so much now.  Jack feels around his head and meets no walls or boundaries.  The sensations of sight, sound, smell and touch don’t go away but they seem to swirl together, a spiraling symphony of separate strands all joined at the center.  He must get to the center, where the self resides.  Except that he seems to have shrugged off self; it’s dropped like a ton of bricks.  He doesn’t miss it at all.  His wife and kids and every other living creature meet him here, where all is truly one and pain and suffering lose their power to disturb.  This is rest.  This is peace.  This is genuine, true . . .

Ow.  Ow ow ow OW!

This isn’t working.  His brain dials up another vision.

There’s a sword in his hand—a light saber.  Aha!  This is more like it.  He takes a practice swing and cleaves reality in two.  Dark side, light side.  Good-evil, up-down, wet-dry, male-female, war-peace, sick-well.  He gets this; it’s all a struggle between opposites, a lack of balance.  One tooth has decided to rebel against the rest of his body and he must call the darn thing out.  Get back in line, you misbegotten knave!  Get back in harmony with your fellow teeth and stop calling attention to yourself!  Backing the pain into a corner seems to lessen it, though it still snarls at him.  But then a question sneaks up from behind: if life is a matter of us/them or me/is, who is me, and who or what is my opposite?  And is there an opposite of pain, other than not-pain?  He flourishes the light saber again, but the questions persist, making it hard to concentrate, and soon his whole head is throbbing, not just his jaw.

Jack wakes up.  That was some ride, though he has no clue where he went.  Slowly his life resumes its normal dimensions of sounds and smells and the second hand sweeping around the clock face over the mantel.  And yes, he has a toothache, which has hunkered down to a dull, persistent throb.  Resolutely he puts his hands on the nubby surface of the recliner arms and pulls himself up.  First, aspirin.  Then he’ll find Dr. Groves’s home number and beg him to meet him in the office in half an hour.  The dentist’s office is no place to spend a Saturday but at least it’s a plan.

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How to have a conversation

The Brick Bible, by Brendan Powell Smith, purports to tell the whole Bible Story in Legos.  This seems like a clever idea but in reality it’s deeply subversive, and not only because Smith is a professing atheist with a declared interest in undermining faith.  Even if he were a devout Baptist with a gift for tinkering I wouldn’t recommend his book, solely for its depiction of God  as a Lego man in a white robe, with a white beard and angry eyebrows.  For the first six days he conjures up pebbly water and blocky vegetation, building up to a big finish with the appearance of a naked Lego man.  And on the seventh day, angry eyebrows still intact, God strings up a hammock between two of the trees he made, pours a tall glass of lemonade and “rests.”

From Powell-Smith to Michelangelo is a huge leap, like that from a backyard studio to the Sistine Chapel ceiling, where God stretches out his fingertip to ensoul Adam.  Impressive as he may be, with his muscled chest and flowing beard, Michelangelo’s Jehovah is as inadequate as Smith’s.  God on a chapel ceiling and God as a two-inch plastic figure are equally reductionist—not only because we don’t know what he looks like, but because even that terminology, “What he looks like,” takes us down a false path.

Up until now we have taken a lot for granted.  What’s that? you say.  Time, space, direction?  Didn’t we go back and account for all those things that other creation stories take for granted?

I’ve tried to show that, for God, creation is not a matter of reorganizing what’s already there, but actually making a “there.”  What we haven’t considered yet is God himself—who or what is he (she, it, they)?  On the seventh day, as God “rests,” we should take the opportunity to turn away from what he made and contemplate Him.

Because he is not really resting, or not in the sense of kicking back in a hammock with a tall one.  Perhaps he is pausing, as he asks us to do on the seventh day.

Classic Christian doctrine teaches that God is three persons in one being.  Jews and cults deny it, agnostics ignore it, atheists dismiss it, and even some Christians brush it aside as irrelevant or impossible, or just not very interesting.  An orthodox church will include Trinitarian teaching in its syllabus, especially in relation to how God works in salvation (the Father wills it, the Son accomplishes it, the Holy Spirit applies it).  Which of course is excellent.  But the application of this doctrine extends far beyond salvation.  I suspect the doctrine of the Trinity is the key to the nature of personhood, thought, creativity, knowledge, and reality itself.

I am here.  You are there.  We are located somewhere on a planet, the planet in a solar system, the solar system in a universe.  This is evident, but how did it happen?  If it’s created—which mainstream science denies but almost everyone believes—what sort of being created it?  Systems and dogmas and modern-day mashups claim to have the answer, while agnostics claim there is no answer.  But boiled down to their essence, we are left with only three possibilities.*

1. Monism: God is everything, and everything is God.

Finally we’re at rest. But . . . what are we?

In the beginning, out of Himself, God said—no wait, God didn’t say anything, and in fact it’s meaningless to speak of God as himself because “everything” can’t be a gender or singular personality.  In the beginning there just Is, and all that arises from That Which Is—all landscapes and species, all molecular arrangements—are manifestations of the One.  And ultimately all distinctiveness is an illusion, because All is One.  That leaf, that raindrop, that butterfly is of the same Oneness as you, and their goal is the same as yours: to get back to perfect unity where there are no distinctions.

When pain intrudes, human consciousness recoils; where can it find relief?  Where there are no distinctions there is no strife, no suffering, no pain.  No gain either, because the concept of value disappears.  No part of Oneness is more necessary or precious than any other: “part” is itself an illusion, for remember, All is One.  Which means there can be no loss, because there is, ultimately, nothing to lose.  And the soul is at rest, if it’s anything that can be called a soul.

Monism seeks peace at any price, and the price is human personality.

That’s one problem with monism—we can’t keep from behaving as though we had a personality, even if we think it’s only temporary.  The other problem is that Oneness cannot create; it can only differentiate.  All distinctions that we perceive are a result of maya, or illusion.  Maya is a bad dream from which all humanity will awake, eventually, to the perfect Oneness where

Nothing.  Ever.  Happens.

If the toothache is bad enough, we would welcome perfect Oneness (i.e., oblivion).  Otherwise, particulars have a way of intruding.

2. Dualism: God is a continual dynamic between opposites (unless he taking one side or the other).

In the beginning was pure energy, which split itself in two.  And now we’re getting some action: the universe is locked in perpetual struggle of yin and yang, light and dark, and its goal is to achieve harmony or balance between them.  The object of life is struggle.

Pythagoras was a fan, and perhaps the first to clearly articulate a dualistic system.  Opposites fuel the

If we ever come to terms . . . no more movies!

cosmos, beginning with the primary dichotomy of limited/unlimited.  Nine more pairs of opposites, added to the first, summed up to a perfect Ten: odd/even, one/many, left/right, male/female; rest/motion, straight/curved, light/dark, good/bad, square/round.  Farther east, Zoroastrianism and Taoism came to the same conclusion: reconciling yin and yang is the aim of life and human history.

Georg Friedrich Hegel’s famous “system” is the soul of dualism.  Hegel saw human history, both global and individual, as a clash between duty and self-interest, a perpetual struggle between truth and falsehood, good and evil.  As a culture moves forward in time it develops a thesis–an overarching principle of how the world works (for example, Might Makes Right).  A competing idea develops, usually within that same culture: the antithesis (such as Right Serves Might).  Variations of these themes will appear also, but the two main ideas will go at it hammer and tongs, trading taunts and punches and sometimes bullets, until the society achieves some sort of synthesis between the two.  This will have to sort itself out before it acquires a label (Might Serves Right unless No One is Looking) and becomes an operating principle, which may enjoy a brief heyday at the top before the antithesis develops and we start the whole process again.

Heraclitus would be proud, because the river of time is continually in flux.  His theory of perpetual change is vindicated . . . except when (if) we achieve perfect balance, at which distinctions collapse and labels become meaningless.  Parmenides smugly smiles and the rest of us (if we’re conscious at all) ask ourselves (if there’s anyone left to ask), what that sound and fury was all about.  But if, on the other hand, perfect balance is beyond our grasp, we may as well sit back and enjoy the ride.  Rest is not happening.  Thing and not-thing, quality and anti-quality are locked in continual struggle, not eventual resolution.  It moves, but it’s not going anywhere.

3. Trinitarianism: God alone is God, and God is not alone.

In the beginning God spoke and acted and everything that is came to be.  Think about that.  I just wrote that sentence: fourteen words, arranged in a grammatical order that makes sense—not just to me, but to you.  You may not agree with the idea expressed in the sentence, but you understand the idea.  A triangular process was just completed: the words I wrote, the words you read, and the understanding that now exists between us.  Without all three sides of that thought, there is no communication.

Now consider—

The Creator conceives an idea: “Let there be.”

The idea takes on Form and substance: “And it was so.”

That form and substance provokes a Response: “And God saw that it was good.”

Without a creator who is diversity-in-unity, there is no creation.  Monism can make no distinctions; all it can say is I = Everything.  But nothing truly acts, and therefore nothing reacts.  All exists to be eventually distilled into Oneness—or, if you like, pure Noun.

Dualism is all Verb: act, react, theorize, anti-theorize, do, undo.  It’s dramatic and exciting and looks great on a movie screen.  But it makes no provision for how it came to be, and its logical end is oblivion.

The Trinitarian God is neither noun nor verb; if we’re speaking in grammatical terms, he is a sentence.  He even expresses himself as a sentence: I am.  In him is the thought, and the meaning of the thought, and the shared understanding between the thinker and the meaner.

We’re looking at the only kind of Creator who could be in creation without being creation—that is, the only kind who can actually create.  Instead of somehow diversifying what he already is or manipulating what is already there, the three-personal God has started a conversation within himself (“Let us . . .”) in which thought and meaning produces material reality.  He has established, from the ground up, all that is necessary for anything in the material universe to exist: space and time, stability and change, growth and proliferation, forward motion and pause.  In biblical terms, he has built his temple.

On the seventh day, he enters it.

If you missed earlier episodes of this series, here’s Creation, Day One: Where Does Darkness Come From?

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1. Do a little research into Zen Buddhism and think through an imaginary dialogue about creation and where it came from.  Or better yet, have such a dialogue with a Zen Buddhist.  Or, if you happen to be a Zen Buddhist, write it.

2. How do popular stories and superhero legends like Star Wars, The Avengers, Percy Jackson and the Olympians, etc., reflect dualism?  How about the Babylon creation story?

*Thanks for the following to Ellis Potter’s 3 Theories of Everything.

 

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Creation, Day Six: Consciousness

And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds, livestock and creeping things and beats of the earth according to their kinds.”  And it was so.  And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the livestock according to their kinds and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind.  And God saw that it was good.

Part One: the Buck Stops – Here.  (With a nod to the opening scene of The Last of the Mohicans, 1992)

Anticipated by a full orchestra fanfare, the scene opens on a breathtaking view of mountain ridges, receding in folds of blue.  Our view gradually closes in on a thick hillside forest, intensely green and dappled with sunlight.  The music narrows and intensifies; a thrumming of low strings hints at little lives spinning out beneath our notice.  Spiders swing out on barely visible threads; flies perch and swipe their robotic heads with robotic forelimbs; ladybugs crawl on their pencil-stroke legs; worms chomp mindlessly through loamy soil.

The music picks up speed.  A lolloping squirrel pauses, sits upright, beady eyes glistening, ears pricked.  A few yards away, a nose-twitching rabbit does the same.  Something rides the wind—speed, threat, fear, haste, heart, pant, pain–

Rabbit and squirrel take to all fours and dart away as it crashes on them, with heaving dun-colored sides and sharp, precise hooves.  Even in his present extremity, he is magnificent: a full-grown buck crowned with antlers that rattle overhead branches as he leaps over a log across his path.  One eye flashes, wide with terror.  The forest swallows him up again, and after the excited whisper of leaves has faded there is no sign he was even there.  Except for a thin red line, spooling out like a thread.  And if we listen closely, a pounding of footsteps, a steady two-beat rhythm unlike the syncopated clatter of four hooves on the packed ground.  Listen: it’s coming closer, closer, closer . . .

Then God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness . . .

 

A two-footed creature, light and swift, leaps into view.  We in the audience feel a little jolt, like Robinson Crusoe stranded on his island, coming upon a human footprint.  The man belongs in this woodland scene, but he is not wholly of it.  He is as graceful in his way as the buck, but something sets him apart: purpose.

He is not motivated by instinct, much less by blind, unrefined terror.  He is not running for his life, or even (not entirely) for his needs.  The buck (once captured) will supply food, clothing, and shelter, but also challenge, drama, joy, and poetic imagery.

His body is covered with a long shirt and leather leggings that provide some protection from stabs and thorns, but the feathers braided into his hair serve no useful purpose, nor the beads jumping against his chest.  In one hand he clutches a rifle.  The rifle is a manufactured item, with an iron-forged barrel and an oak-carved stock, loaded with a lead ball he made himself.  There was another ball, now spent in the hedge after grazing the buck’s.  On long strides, the man bounds across our field of vision.  Still trembling with that first start of recognition at the sight of his face, we follow.

Another figure in homespun and buckskin flickers through the brush on the overlooking ridge.  From below, a third is working his way up.  They are converging on their prey, closing in on the last stand.

It’s not far.  The buck stops in a grassy clearing, as though he instinctively knows his time is up.  His grating breath echoes harshly in the glade.

Boom!

A second lead ball burrows into his neck and he obediently drops.

The man and his companions approach confidently but respectfully.  They greet the dead animal as their brother and thank him for providing for their needs.  With swift, practiced movements, they gut the buck and truss his lifeless body on a pole.  They are exercising dominion, as all human societies have done for all time.  The killing is about survival, but the blessing is about ceremony and commemoration, and an unspoken need to shape experience.

Of course it’s a shame that the beautiful buck had to die in the first place.  But that’s getting ahead of the story.

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Part Two: Something to Think about—and Someone to Think

By the end of Genesis 1 the earth is bubbling with plant life and creature life—so why do we encounter this puzzling passage in Genesis 2?

When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up—for the LORD God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground, and a mist was going up from the land and watering the whole face of the ground—then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. (vss. 5-7)

Higher critics call Genesis 2 an “alternate” account from a different Jewish tradition, and I’m not here to argue.  It’s the same story, but we seem to be coming at it from a different angle: chapter 1 is the summary view, an answer to the philosophical question, “Why is there something rather than nothing?”  And the scientific question, “Where did it all come from?”  Chapter 2 may be intended as an answer to the ontological question, “What does it mean for anything to ‘be’?” From the image of a world already wildly proliferating, the scene is suddenly, oddly barren.  No bush, no small plants, only a desert-y stretch of ground.  “In the land,” some commentators say, probably refers not to the whole earth, but to the selected piece of earth where God plans his final act of creation.  With startling particularity, we’re told where it is, or at least what is nearby: the River Euphrates, which can still be located on a map under the same name.

Imagine God scraping aside the vegetation, brushing away the debris, rubbing his hands together, flexing his metaphorical fingers, bending down.  All other animals he “created” (Gen. 1:21, 25, 27).  Man, he “forms.”  It’s a particular act from a particular medium, the “dust of the ground.”

Why not mud, or clay?  Every child knows that dust doesn’t stick.

The Hebrew word (apar) is not one of those flexible terms interchangeable with “mud” or “clay.”  Apar is

(detail of “Ex nihilo” sculpture by Frederick Hart)

a powdery substance that can be flung in the air to express disapproval (Luke 23:21) or paired with ashes to accompany deep sorrow or repentance (Job 42:6).  It doesn’t stick together.  Nevertheless God “forms” something of it, the first time that particular verb is used in the creation account.  It implies a personal connection, a hands-on, deliberative, intentional, well-thought-out and considered act.  Let us make man in our image, after our likeness . . .

Watch this: the outward image takes shape—a head and a trunk, two arms and two legs, similar in many ways to the other mammals now roaming the earth, and yet strikingly different.  No one, least of all the beasts themselves, would mistake him for a beast.  The Divine Holiness has planned this form down to the last brain cell.

Perhaps he contemplates it for a moment, this ultimate creation, the habitation of his image visible for the first time in a body.  This is revolutionary: spirit and flesh are about to be fused in awareness, and that which eats and digests and defecates and mates and sires and bears will plant one foot in the infinite.  God himself, by his predetermined will and focused energy and infinite power, holds the particles of this quintessence of dust* together.  He bends down and breathes into it,

and man became a living soul.**

The soul with the breath of God in it can never die.  And the Immortal Breath has committed himself to human history with a kiss.

And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the East, and there he put the man he had formed.  (Gen. 2:8)

“Adam, arise.  Come with me.”

The man pulls himself to his feet in a graceful, coordinated motion of golden limbs.  He understands at once, he loves immediately.  He walks across the bare land in a melting sunrise; for the first time ever, the image of God casts a long shadow.  The sweetness of water meets his nostrils and the chirp of birdsong reaches his ears long before the green of the garden brims on the horizon.  As he approaches, leaves rattle like tambourines, butterflies startle their wings and prowling cats prick their ears and tilt their exotic faces.  The garden buzzes with a rumor of the king’s approach.  When he enters, the entire animal assembly is waiting for him, called together by the same voice that brought them into being.

Now, says the Lord: What are you going to call them?

  1. If it’s warm enough, find a patch of ground outside and lay on it.  Try to overcome your scruples and forgo the blanket; nothing between you and the bare ground.  Spread your fingers and flatten as much of your body as possible.  Imagine the great round ball of the earth in all its physicality, and try to feel yourself as one with it skin, bones, vital organs, every part of you.  Recall that one day (if the Lord tarries) your body will be one with it, and take a few deep breaths.  Do you feel infinite?  Why?
  2. Spend some time contemplating the family pet, or the birds gathered around your feeder.  Look into their eyes, if you can.  How do you feel kinship?  How do you feel alienation?
  3. Write a list of the frustrations you have with your body.  Then make a list of the things your body can do.  Which list is longer?
  4. Go people-watching in a local park or mall.  Imagine them all—young and old, fat or thin, lively or weary—as immortal souls that will never die.  How does this change your view of them?

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*Hamlet, Act II, Scene 2, “What a piece of work is man” speech.  In medieval thought, “dust” was the fifth element, after earth, water, air, and fire: the mysterious, invisible substance out of which God created life.

** KJV.  Most modern translations render this phrase as “and man became a living creature,” or “living being.”  I’m sure that’s closer to the Hebrew meaning, but from the context it’s clear that this living creature is distinct from all the others, so I prefer the older translation here.

Next up: God “rests.”  Did anything happen on Day Seven?  More than you know . . .

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Creation, Day Five: Being and Soaring

And God said, “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.  So God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind.  And God saw that it was good.  And God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.”  And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day.

Why did the philosopher cross the river?

Time: ca 500 B.C.

Place: a river somewhere in neutral territory

Characters: The philosopher HERACLITUS* and his followers, a noisy, busy band of clowns, and the rival philosopher PARMENIDES** and his followers, a staid, stately group of stiffs, converge on opposite sides of the river.

HERACLITUS.  Ah!  Parmenides of Elea.  We meet at last!

PARMENIDES.  Heraclitus of Ephesus, greeting!  Our encounter was in the stars and thus there is a sense in which we have always met.

CLOWNS (ad lib).  Huh??  What’d he say?  What the–!

H. thought you might say that. But even as you speak, time passes, and the Parmenides I now behold is not the same man who spoke moments ago.

STIFFS.  (all with question marks over their heads and puzzled expressions)

P.  Nice try, Heraclitus. But you and I both know you’re just being cute.  The world could not possibly operate on your principle.

H.  Au contraire, Parmenides! I present to you the evidence.  Observe this river.

The dueling duo as imagined by Raphael. In real life, they probably never met.

CLOWNS comically observe with popping eyes.

H.  I place my foot in, like so—

extends foot into water

H. And now I withdraw my foot . . . .

The foot comes up, dripping.

H. And when I do, it is no longer the same river, because all the water that first embraced my foot is past, never to return. Ergo: you cannot step in the same river twice!

CLOWNS cheer, turn cartwheels, slap high fives, etc.

P.  (arms folded, surrounded by followers who do the same) That’s ridiculous.

H.  I beg to differ, esteemed sage! We cannot escape the stream of time.  Everything that is, is in a state of flux—you, me, this river, this tree.  Everything is on its way to becoming something else.

P.  Something else? Does that mean you are only Heraclitus temporarily?  Will I one day have the pleasure of meeting a Demetrius or Sophocles instead of you?

H.  Well . . .

P.  Will this river cease to be a river?

H.  Uh . . .

P.  Will this tree become something other than a tree?

H.  No, but—

P.  Will your nose migrate to another position on your face, or become an eye, or a mouth?

H.  Don’t be silly.

P.  Then how can you call anything by its name, other than by reason of its being, unchangeably, what it is?

STIFFS.  (in unison, uniformly pleased)  Bravo, Master.

H.  (grabbing a clown baby from among his followers) Remember when you were this age, Parmenides?  Would your followers have recognized you?

P.  That’s not fair . . . .

H.  And when you’re old and gray and can’t remember where you put your stylus, will they still be around?

P.  Let’s not get personal. Just tell me what matters most: being, or becoming?

H.  Without becoming there’s nothing to be!

P.  Without being there’s nothing to become!

H.  So it seems we’re at the same place we started—

H and P. (together)  IMPASSE!

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The argument between Parmenides and Heraclitus is still going on.  It’s a fundamental question—if not the fundamental question—of both philosophy and science.  Is life a matter of being or becoming?  Is reality best described as particles, or process?  If “life is but a brief candle” (Macbeth, Act V, Scene 5) that burns brightly for a relative second of time and then disappears in a trail of smoke, what was that all about?

Something tells us there’s more to life than movement and cessation.  If selfhood means anything, there must be an essential self, a being that is immutably Ben or Asaph or Samarra, who will somehow survive its death and live on in some fashion (He has also planted eternity in the heart of man, Ecclesiastes 3:11).  We resist growing older, continually express surprise at how fast babies develop and kids lunge from childhood to adolescence, even though it literally is the most natural thing in the world.  We accept that newborn Sarah is the same as septuagenarian Sarah, but it just doesn’t seem right.

Yet who would live forever, unchanged?  In Tuck Everlasting, by Natalie Babbitt, a family drinks from a secret spring whose water keeps them from ever growing older.  The main character, a ten-year-old girl, is offered some of that same water but eventually refuses it.  As anyone should.  As frightening as our forward motion through time, feeling sometimes as rudderless as Noah in his ark, we wouldn’t have it any other way.  Change is where things happen.

But not just for the sake of happening.  During my teen years the daytime soap opera Dark Shadows, with its two romantic leads Barnabas and Quentin Collins, was all the rage.  Barnabas was immortal and had a propensity for biting lush young females on the neck.  Quentin had an unsettling habit of growing facial hair and sharp teeth during the full moon.  Every day’s episode would end on a typical cliffhanger, ensuring the audience would be back the next day even if they had to cancel a dentist appointment or rearrange their shopping schedule (no TiVo or cable then).  One summer I watched an episode to see what all the excitement was about, then watched another, and another, and found myself hooked.

Besides paranormal sexiness, change was the attraction, as it is for every soap.  Every single day brought new plot developments and twists and secondary characters tracing their arc across umpteen episodes.  Would she, won’t he, could she, will he—and suddenly I realized that the show had no being, only becoming.  Barnabas’ story would never resolve; nor Quentin’s.  Just endless cycles until, like me, everybody got fed up.  Dark Shadows was a smashing success for about two years.  When the novelty wore off the mechanics of change-for-the-sake of-change were exposed for all to see.  Other soaps, like Days of Our Lives and General Hospital ran on the same principle, but doctors and rakes and gamblers and vamps have more than one trick up their sleeves, and could keep an audience guessing longer than vampires and werewolves.

That’s the problem with Heraclitus.  Change for the sake of change ultimately satisfies no one.

Everybody wants to be somebody, and I don’t mean Somebody with a capital S.  We simply want to know ourselves.  Project yourself back to high school—or worse, junior high—and recall how desperate you were to know how to act.  “Just be yourself,” the grownups said.  But the swift changes of adolescence had swept you away from who you were.  Everybody was looking sideways at the cool kids, trying to pick up cues.  Did you just give up and set out to be a nonconformist, only to find you didn’t have the courage for it, and maybe that wasn’t really you either?

But Parmenides has his problems too.  Change can come too hard and fast, but what if it never came at all?  The weightlessness of adolescence terrifies, but it also exhilarates.

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

Of sun-split couds and done a thousand things

You have not dreamed of . . . .           

(John Magee, “High Flight,” 1941)

Any history of human flight begins with the dreamers who launched themselves from cliffs, flapping madly their homemade wings constructed of canvas and balsa wood.  Except for fulsome phrases about “man’s longings to soar,” these jokey introductions to human flight hardly ever pause to wonder why an otherwise sensible human being would feel compelled to leap out into empty space.  Our body structure, weight and substance are not in any way adaptable to larking about in the sky.  Nothing could be more obvious, and there’s plenty to do on land, so why even think about it?  Why dream about it, as many of us do?  “I dreamed I was flying,” we say, and the implication is almost always good.  We love those dreams.  What is the source of this deep-rooted envy of our fellow creatures who can simply lift their wings and launch into three-dimensional movement?

Swimming is the closest we can manage under our own power, but only the best swimmers experience it, and for only as long as their breath holds out.  If I could choose an animal to be for a while, my choice would hover between an otter and a whale.  Otters have more fun, but they are subject to being killed and eaten by predators.  Nobody bothers a whale (except of course for humans, but we can leave them out of the equation for now).  And they seem to have their own kind of fun, as I gather from videos of them launching their huge bodies out of the sea to kiss the air in a shower of sunlit drops.  Wouldn’t that be the life—no predators, no food shortages, full rein of the boundless ocean, living large while propelled solemnly about on massive flutes.

Air and water—home of three-dimensional movement, of effortless fight and endless wave, darting and dodging, soaring and diving, never at rest.  And never—to speak figuratively—in the same place twice.  Birds build their nests and salmon return to their spawning beds, but their symbolic habitat is the never-ending Now, where no creature plants a foot or fin.

We need both: we need the solid ground, where we can build and plant.  But our hearts yearn for the waters and the air, for “High Flight” and trackless sea:

I must go down to the sea again; to the lonely sea and sky

and all I ask is a tall ship, and a star to steer her by.

(John Masefield, “Sea Fever”)

To be fully ourselves, we need to venture out in unexplored territories and uncertain futures.  We need to grow and change: a human who doesn’t grow and change may have more qualities in common with an amoeba.

But also, to be fully ourselves, we need to be . . . ourselves.

On Day Five, God creates inhabitants for the depthless sea and the lofty sky.  Their scales flash in the sunlit water; their feathers strain light as they lift for flight.  Though they live measured lives, they cannot measure.  Birds don’t build birdhouses; whales don’t plant plankton farms.  They are there to feed us, and to be fed, as a Jewish teacher pointed out during a sermon on a hillside: “Consider the birds of the air.  They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns.  And yet your heavenly Father feeds them” (Matthew 6:26).

On another hillside, or perhaps even that same one, after the sermon, he confronted a crowd of 5000 hungry people.  Time for a practical application, as five small fish multiplied in his hands like a huge haul in a net, and filled every person there to the full.

The inhabitants of sea and sky feed our bodies, but they also feed our imaginations.  Our bodies can’t fly, but our minds can.

Creation, Day Six – Consciousness

  1. Think back on your childhood, from as early as you can remember, up through early adulthood.  Are you still 7, or 10, or 17 somewhere inside?   Do all those stages of yourself still exist?  What age to you best remember, or most identify with?
  2. How would you divide the phases of your growing-up years (e.g., early childhood 4-11, pre-adolescence 12-13, adolescence 14-17, young adult 17-25)?  What color would you give each phase?
  3. What’s different about you or your surroundings from last week to this week?

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*Heraclitus of Ephesus, a pre-Socratic philosopher, ca. 500 B. C.   Though little is know about what he actually taught, he is credited with the idea that all matter is continually in flux.

**Parmenides of Elea, born ca. 515, wrote a poem called “On Nature,” of which about 100 lines survive, sketching his view of nature as all one thing and change as an illusion.

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Creation, Day Four: Dancing with the Stars

And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night.  And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.”  And it was so.  And God made the two great lights—the greater light to light the day and the lesser light to rule the night and the stars.  And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness.  And God saw that it was good.  And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.         Gen. 1:14-19

Hum the first two notes of “Over the Rainbow.”  (I’m not kidding: hum it!)

You’ve just hummed an octave, with eight musical steps between the low pitch and the high pitch (octave stemming from the Latin word for “eight”).  If you’ve ever taken piano lessons or sung in a choir, you know what a musical scale sounds like: do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do.  From the first do to the next do is eight tones, and if you sang only those two notes with no others in between, it would sounds like the first two notes of “Over the Rainbow.”

Image result for do re mi scale

Now try humming the first five tones of the scale: do-re-mi-fa-so.  Hum the first do again, then go directly to so, leaving out the notes in between.  One time, but hum do twice, followed by so twice.  Does it sounds like “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”  (or “The Alphabet Song”)?

One more: think of the first three notes of “Taps,” the bugle call played at military funerals.  Or the first four notes of Wagner’s “Wedding March,” also known as “Here Comes the Bride.”   Or, if you’re from the same great state as I am, “The Eyes of Texas.”  With the first note as do, the second note is four steps up the scale: do-re-mi-fa.

We call the interval between the pitches in “Somewhere over the Rainbow” an eighth, or an octave, the opening interval in “Twinkle Twinkle” a fifth, and the opening interval in the “Wedding March” a fourth.  And none of this seems to have anything to do with Day Four of creation, when heavenly bodies appeared in the sky.  But roughly 2600 years ago, Pythagoras thought differently.

Pythagoras is such a shady figure he may not have existed at all.  But no one doubts the existence of the “Pythagorean School” of scholars and mystics who congregated on the island of Samos and pledged to eat no meat and have no sex.  For a small group of bachelor vegetarians with a possibly mythical leader, their influence on history was profound.

A major principle of Pythagorean thought is that reality is based on mathematical relationships.  His famous theory of triangles* is only part of it.  Even more fascinating, and apropos for our purpose, were his experiments with music.

Pythagoras discovered that a string tuned to any musical tone, when cut in half, will produce the same tone at a higher pitch.   Hum the first two notes of “Somewhere over the Rainbow” again.  These two notes have a precise mathematical relationship.  Pythagoras had discovered the octave; to get the same tone, eight steps higher, divide the string exactly in half.  Mathematically, the ratio is 2:1.  Scientifically, the half string vibrates exactly twice as fast as the full string, producing a note that is equal in tone but higher in pitch.

Continuing his experiments, Pythagoras cut an identical string 1/3 from the lower end.  The new pitch, combined with the original, now sounded like the first notes of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”  (Could Pythagoras have been the mythical author of that ancient ditty?)   Not an echo, like the octave, but a pleasing transition with, again, a precise mathematical relationship: 3:2.  The short string vibrates two-thirds as fast as the long one.

What if he divided another identical string in half, and half again, so that the length of the string was one-fourth the length of the original?  Now the transition between the two notes sounded like “The Eyes of Texas” (or rather, “The Eyes of Samos”)—another pleasing interval with a mathematical relationship of 4:3.

As it happens, the Octave (Somewhere), the Perfect fifth (as in Twinkle, Twinkle), and the Perfect Fourth (Wedding March) are musical intervals common to all cultures everywhere.   Eastern music and primitive music have distinctive scales, tones, and rhythmic patterns that mystify Westerners , but all cultures make use of octaves, fourths, and fifths.

All melodies consist of stepping from one note to another, and the distance one note to the next is noted mathematically: not merely fourths and fifths, but thirds, seconds, sixths, sevenths, and descending, augmented, and diminished versions of all those.  Pythagoras would have said that music is mathematics, and mathematical relationships are a form of music, extending throughout the cosmos.  Each heavenly body, each star and planet, has its own pitch, hummed in harmony with all the rest.

Here the mystical side of Pythagoras overreached the scientific, but he was on to something.  A couple of thousand years later, Western science would come to the conclusion that the key to the universe, its language or code, was numbers—or, more precisely—numerical relationships:   intervals, measurements, calibrations.

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Let them be for signs and seasons, and for days and years.

You want numbers?  Here are some numbers:

  • Two of the great forces in the universe, gravity and electromagnetism, have to be balanced in a precise ratio, namely 1 over 1040, or one part in ten thousand trillion trillion trillion.  If the ratio is off, physical life is impossible.
  • Space energy density, or the self-stretching property of the universe, can’t vary more than one part in 10120 and still produce stars and planets.
  • Our home galaxy, the Milky Way, measures approximately100,000 light years from one arm to the other.  Our sun is located far from the center, but if it were any closer radiation would have destroyed it.
  • The distance from earth to the moon varies a bit depending on where the moon is in its orbit.  The average is 238,857 miles—much closer, and the moon would have crashed into the earth.  Any farther, and the moon’s gravitational effect would have no influence.  As it is, that cratered chunk of rock stabilizes the earth at an axial tilt of approximately 23.5 degrees (it varies slightly with the moon’s orbit).  Without the pull of the moon, earth would wobble from burning hot to freezing cold, a variation of 200 degrees.  Because the moon is where it is, we have signs and seasons, days and years.

Signs and seasons, days and years.  Light exists—we know it does, even if we haven’t exactly figured out what it is.  Time exists, too—we know that because there was “a beginning.”  But what was the form of time?   Were days always marked by twenty-four hours, or was there a time when time itself roamed outside the discipline of measurement, stretching thin and bunching up?  Is there a master clock?  When was it set, and who set it?

Day Four marks several new developments.  First, the heavenly bodies appear: a kingly sun, a queenly moon, and attendant stars beyond number.  The language of Genesis gives a nod to mythological notions of the sun “ruling” the day, like Apollo’s flaming chariot, and the moon presiding over night like the huntress Diana, stalking her prey.

Secondly, Day Four sets up a parallel structure.  On days one, two, and three, we have regions, or territories: the heavens (and earth), air and seas, dry land.  Day Four begins the process of populating those regions.  “The heavens” are the realm of heavenly bodies, whose mysterious influence and regular movement would occupy thinkers and observers for millennia.

But another significance of Day Four is often overlooked: in it, God establishes the principle of measurement.  Not only for time (“days and seasons and years”) but also, I think it’s safe to infer, for space.  I remember past events based partly on where we were at the time: the where indicates the when.  I interpret what happens to me partly by locating myself in space.  Spatial relationships, ratios, and measurement are essential to figuring out where we are, where we’re going, and how to get there, both practically and scientifically.  And numbers are the key.

Pythagoras may have been the first to link numbers with music and space.  But two thousand years later, in the pursuit of science, Johannes Kepler made an amazing discovery that hearkened back to the Island of Samos.

While drawing a geometric figure of a circle within an equilateral triangle, circumscribed by another perfect circle, it struck him that the ratio of the two circles equaled the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn.  What if all the planetary orbits displayed a similar geometric relationship?  The hypothesis didn’t work out quite as well as he hoped, but speculation along this line led to Kepler’s three laws of planetary motion and the discovery that a) orbits are elliptical, not circular; b) a planet’s speed varies between aphelion (when it’s closest to the sun) and perihelion (its farthest distance from the sun); and c) the duration of any planet’s orbit depends on that planet’s distance from the sun.

We learn this in science class and file it with our other sets of “three laws” to remember for the test.  But Kepler’s laws not only provided the necessary foundation for Newton’s principles of universal gravity, they also reached back to the Pythagorean notion of universal harmony.  Pythagoras envisioned the planets ascending from earth at regular intervals, as though on the rungs of a ladder.  Each “rung” corresponded to a musical interval—the same intervals he had discovered on his cut-up lyre strings.  The cosmos, Pythagoras believed, danced to music.  Music was good for the soul and the body, and no wonder; it’s part of the stuff we’re made from.

In formulating his second law (that planets moved faster at perihelion and slower at aphelion), Kepler calculated their velocities at these two extremes and wrote down the ratio.  Saturn, for example, moves at a rate of 106 degrees per solar day at aphelion and 135 degrees at perihelion, thus a ratio of 106:135.  After he factored these numbers and cancelled the common factors the ratio differs by only two seconds from 4:5, or the interval of a major third.  It wasn’t just a coincidence: the ratio of velocities of all the known planets closely corresponded to musical intervals.

But that’s not all.  When he compared the velocity ratios for combined pairs of planets, (such as Jupiter’s perihelion and Mars’ aphelion) he found the intervals of a complete scale.  Jupiter and Mars sing a minor third, Earth and Venus a minor sixth.  His discovery of elliptical orbits was a disappointment to him at first—it seemed to spoil the beauty of perfect concentric circles.  But as the planets rolled along their elliptical paths, shifting speed and velocity, they described recognizable patterns, even harmonic chords.  “Henceforth,” he wrote, “it is no longer a harmony made for the benefit of our planet, but the song which the cosmos sings to its Lord and center, the Solar Logos.”

Modern science, while it doesn’t come to the same metaphysical conclusion as Kepler, finds his measurements to be “frighteningly good,” as the famed astronomer Fred Hoyle observed.

This is my father’s world, and to my listening ears

all nature sings, and round me rings the music of the spheres.

Mathematics and science were created on this day.  And so was music, “While the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.”**

Creation, Day Five – Being and Soaring

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*Pythagorean theorem: a fundamental relation in Euclidean geometry among the three sides of a right triangle. It states that the square of the hypotenuse (the side opposite the right angle) is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides.

**Job 38:7

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Creation, Day Two: in Which Not Much Happens?

And God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.”  And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse.  And it was so.  And God called the expanse Heaven.  And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.  Gen. 1:3-5

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Compare Gen. 1:3-5 with this account from the annals of Babylon:

According to ancient Babylonian mythology, the earth began with a battle between Tiamat, goddess of the ocean, and the children she produced by sweet-water Apsu, god of rivers.  One great-grandson of this line was Marduk (see Jeremiah 50:2), god of the four winds and a hell-raiser from birth.

So, one day Marduk was approached by his father Ea and grandfather Anu to lead an army against Tiamat, who had been busily mating with monsters in order to produce a race of giant snakes, raging bull-men, etc.  Her plan was apparently to wipe out her progeny by Apsu.

Coldly blinking all four eyes, Marduk was unmoved by the possible fate of his father and grandfather.  But he agreed to take the job, on one condition: that all the deities of Mesopotamia declare him to be their chief.  What was in it for him?

My own utterance shall fix fate instead of you—

            Whatever I create shall never be altered!

            The decree of my lips shall never be revoked, never changed.

Ea called a counsel of the gods, which degenerated into an all-night drinking party.  The carousing deities built a throne for Marduk and granted him all the powers his little ol’ heart desired.  Also: May your utterance be law, your word never falsified.

Equipped with these bona fides, a formidable war-chariot, and his own mighty presence, Marduk set out

Marduk defeats Kingu for Babylon’s top spot

at the head of his army, and the mere sight of him shocked the assembled monster-sons of Tiamat.  Marduk plowed right past them to get to his great-grandmother, whom he challenged to single combat.

She accepted.  Big mistake.

It was hardly a contest; after pinning her down with his net, Marduk blew her up with the four winds and sent an arrow into her belly, then split her down the middle and defeated the rest of the enemy gods while standing on her corpse.

The body turned out to be incredibly useful:

He sliced her in half like a fish for drying:

Half of her he put up to roof the sky,

Drew a bolt across and made a guard to hold it.

Her waters he arranged so they could not escape.

East and west originated from two of her ribs, and her liver served as the pole star for the remaining gods.  Her spittle became rain and fog, and from her eyes sprang the headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates.

The gods were impressed—Marduk earned that throne and crown!  What next?

Blood I will mass and cause bones to be.   I will establish a savage, ‘Man’ shall be his name.

He shall be charged with the service of the gods that they might be at ease.

The raw material for this slave-race called “Man” came from the body of Kingu, Tiamat’s hybrid son, whose blood seeded the first humans and passed down through the generations.  Rebellion is thus in humanity’s blood, from that day to this, but their fate is fixed to serve the gods forever.

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Almost all the ancient mythical traditions place the creation story in a setting of conflict.  The recurring themes—father against son, clan against clan, chaos resisting order—indicates something very unstable about the human psyche, but I can only give it a sidelong glance for now, while marveling how peaceful the Genesis story is in comparison.  God is not in conflict with anyone as he goes about calling forth.  On the first day, with the creation of light, all the raw material is in place: the direction of time, the periodic table of elements, the two basic forces of gravity and nuclear energy.  Particles are quivering, atoms are dancing, molecules are awaiting form.

We expect an explosion, but on the second day not much appears to happen.  In fact it’s hard to get a grip on what actually is happening, as you will soon discover if you try to explain it to young children.  When they get older they will come to understand “atmosphere” and water vapor, and water being held in a canopy (one meaning of the word expanse) until the time of the flood.  This is both good theology and good natural history, but as it relates to creativity, and creation itself, there may be something equally significant happening on Day Two.

First God pours out energy.  Then he begins to arrange it, which starts with making distinctions.

To the ancients, no property was more basic than water.  They were on to something:  Water comprises about 80% of earth’s surface and 80% of our bodies, and even in the driest desert there is no life without it.   The oldest civilizations saw water as a given.  No one made it; it was just there.  Apsu and Tiamat, the primeval deities of Mesopotamia, were the sweet and salty blend of waters that gave rise to the Fertile Crescent.

Water nourished; it also destroyed.  All ancient cultures passed around flood stories, as though a memory of watery devastation was burned into their collective consciousness.  No life exists without water, but for life to exist it must separate itself from water and establish itself on the banks—that’s why so many creation accounts are a record of struggle.  Water was the elemental force which must be overcome.  Water was the primeval chaos, which must be escaped.

Even in the Bible, throughout the Old Testament “the sea” is a threat to order, an elemental force that must be contained: This far may you come, and no farther (Job 38:11).  The visions of Revelation return to that image, for where does the beast of chapter 13 emerge but the sea?  And most intriguing of all, when the heavens and earth of Genesis 1:1 are cleared away for the new heaven and earth of Revelation 21, “the sea was no more.”

What does Day Two say about creativity?  The verb may be more important than the nouns: God separates.  He makes distinctions: heaven and earth, here and there.  The Hebrew word usually translated “Heavens” has no precise English equivalent; it’s used to refer both to sky and to everything that appears in the sky, including clouds, stars, and common sparrows.  But it directs our attention.  Look up, look down, look left and right.  Here we have opposites, here we have direction and location.  Just as “in the beginning” signals rudimentary time, separating waters from waters gives form to rudimentary space.

Imagine God as the primeval real-estate agent: “Location, location, location.”  Every work starts not only sometime but somewhere.  The second day turns out to be as vital, thrilling, and potent as the first, for in cleaving the restless water He establishes length, height and breadth.  The four-cornered canvas of darkness receives its first brushes of paint, and we now know left from right, here from there.

Creation, Day Three – The Story Takes Root

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  1. Look up other ancient creation stories (such as Mayan, Greek, Norse) and compare with the Babylonian and Genesis stories.
  2. If you have to live in only two dimensions, which would you choose?  Height-width, heigh-depth, depth, width? (See Edwin Abbott’s classic novel Flatland for an idea what you can do with two dimensions.  Actually, not much.)
  3. How important is it to make proper distinctions in politics, relationships, and art?  For example, what’s wrong with these statements:
  • Love is love.
  • Advocates for border security are anti-immigrant.
  • Modern art is ugly.