Post 125.
I am a window radiating the light of the sun. Over years I have been scuffed, cracked, shattered, and repaired many times over. The daylight shining through me is not as clear as it might have been when I was new. To gaze into a baby’s eyes is to savor, simply, the beatific glow of God. But this is how the Lord, the creator of all material and immaterial realities, intended us to be. Love is relationship, and our relationships, duties, and commitments toward one another wound us. All relationships with others do. And God’s very name is Love. As beams of light dance through my flaws, illuminating this room imperfectly, creating unexpected rainbows, shadows, hope, and traces of clarity, I begin with the very beginning.
From nothing, a tone. In the beginning “God said”[i] creation into existence. In the first artistic act, God sang all matter and time, all life, and finally, human life with its material and spiritual existence, and put them in an idiosyncratic position as both stewards and co-creators. Humans were formed to work and play in the garden, “to cultivate and care for it,”[ii] to eat, and create beauty from their innocence, in free cooperation with their creator. This first song of creation lasted six days, and on the seventh, the Lord rested. Then the Lord intoned, “very good.”[iii] But, without having original sin themselves, Adam and Eve fell from this state of grace. With them, all creation fell, including their creative work. Beautiful things became toil. Burden. People envied, injured, and killed one another and damaged creation. Much philosophy begins, in some way, by looking bravely at toil, burden, and suffering. These broken things are an inescapable reality, an abyss that philosophers bravely face and scrutinize. However, while recognizing these gloomy realities, Christian philosophers are called to begin from a more optimistic position—not the cracks, but the dancing of the light. God is Love.
Endnotes:
[i] Gen 1:3 NABRE, emphasis added.
[ii] Gen 2:15 NABRE.
[iii] Gen 1:31 NABRE.
Image (Markers & Highlighter): Wounded Window, Glowing by Daniel J. Shevock, 2024
I am a window radiating the light of the sun. Over years I have been scuffed, cracked, shattered, and repaired many times over. The daylight shining through me is not as clear as it might have been when I was new. To gaze into a baby’s eyes is to savor, simply, the beatific glow of God. But this is how the Lord, the creator of all material and immaterial realities, intended us to be. Love is relationship, and our relationships, duties, and commitments toward one another wound us. All relationships with others do. And God’s very name is Love. As beams of light dance through my flaws, illuminating this room imperfectly, creating unexpected rainbows, shadows, hope, and traces of clarity, I begin with the very beginning.
From nothing, a tone. In the beginning “God said”[i] creation into existence. In the first artistic act, God sang all matter and time, all life, and finally, human life with its material and spiritual existence, and put them in an idiosyncratic position as both stewards and co-creators. Humans were formed to work and play in the garden, “to cultivate and care for it,”[ii] to eat, and create beauty from their innocence, in free cooperation with their creator. This first song of creation lasted six days, and on the seventh, the Lord rested. Then the Lord intoned, “very good.”[iii] But, without having original sin themselves, Adam and Eve fell from this state of grace. With them, all creation fell, including their creative work. Beautiful things became toil. Burden. People envied, injured, and killed one another and damaged creation. Much philosophy begins, in some way, by looking bravely at toil, burden, and suffering. These broken things are an inescapable reality, an abyss that philosophers bravely face and scrutinize. However, while recognizing these gloomy realities, Christian philosophers are called to begin from a more optimistic position—not the cracks, but the dancing of the light. God is Love.
Endnotes:
[i] Gen 1:3 NABRE, emphasis added.
[ii] Gen 2:15 NABRE.
[iii] Gen 1:31 NABRE.
Image (Markers & Highlighter): Wounded Window, Glowing by Daniel J. Shevock, 2024
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