How We Got Here
I’d like to say something about creation. I write small ‘c’ creation,
but I might just as well write large ‘C’ creation, because it’s not so
easy these days, if it ever was, to tell where God’s Creation ends and
Man’s begins. Now, some will admonish me that it is sacrilege, sin, or
just plain ignorance to speak of creation and Creation in the same
breath, as though they were somehow related, as though I were saying
that I make no distinction between the two. And, perhaps, I stand
corrected, although, first of all, I doubt it, and, second of all, I
have always found people who insist upon interpreting the Gospel for me,
as though I am incapable of reaching my own conclusions, nothing more
than tiresome.
If they are correct, then the Creations of God, the land, the seas, the
heavens, and all the things and creatures therein contained exist in an
entirely separate realm from the creations of you and me and Mozart, the
art, the music, the philosophy and drama, the dance, the language, or a
chorus of human voices raised to the moon or the stars or to the wind.
Personally, I fail to hear a difference between a chorus of wolves and a
chorus of humans, and if the lone wolf’s howling is nothing more than
God’s Creation, than neither is mine. But that’s only my opinion.
This is still a touchy subject nowadays. I’m not sure why, because
there does seem to be a full-scale retreat to the bosom of spirituality
and a massive realization, global in scale, that industry and science,
while making life more comfortable, have otherwise brought us nowhere,
have answered few meaningful questions but have left us instead with
millions more, have left us better fed, better clothed, better educated
and protected from the unpredictable nature of Nature, from, dare I say
it, God’s Creations, but have nowhere provided a single answer nor a
solitary notion of the meaning behind the mystery. So, we have a better
idea now of how the Heavens turn, when they began turning, and where
they may stop, and, yet, ultimately, inside the very instant of the Big
Bang itself as conceived by the Board of Directors of International
Physicists lies the finger or hand or forearm of a Creator – of God. So
science, so medicine, so all pursuits of a purely intellectual or
rational nature bring us full circle back to spirituality – to the
underlying mystery of life.
I am not a particularly spiritual person, nor am I by any definition a
religious one, and, yet, I can get chills up and down my spine, feel my
eyes well up with tears, be unable to swallow for a lump in my throat
the size of a robin’s egg, and feel my heart swell, expand, practically
double in size, when I hear beautiful music, or am moved by authentic
drama, or simply recognize the brilliance of creativity in a story, a
poem, or a painting. It is not the particulars of the creation that
move me so much as it is the spirit, the grace, the power of making
something out of nothing, or, if not nothing, for truly, it never comes
out of nothing, then out of what so often is nothing more than an
urgency, an indefinable instinct, to translate a personal experience
into something that can be shared with others. It’s the connection with
the heart, with the mind, and, ultimately, with that which lies beneath
them - that which powers them, that which defined them in the moment of
their definition and continues to inspire them, that thing, that
indefinable that can only be expressed indirectly, that thing that
leaves the footprints in the sand or makes the sudden sound in the woods
or leaves behind the wonderful aroma in the garden, but which we never
actually see or hear or smell, it is that mysterious thing which I shall
call spirit for lack of knowing what else to call it – that is the
common thread that runs through all that I find beautiful. I make no
distinction between flowers and Mozart, between waves on the beach and a
well-told story. It is all Creation – big ‘C’ and little ‘c’ – and it
is all ours.
~Tifkak~
© 1999, by Paul Kaufman
