Origins

Genesis

Some say human beings are little universes. 
I say you are a really big universe!
—Rumi

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Whenever I’m in conflict with the world and wondering if this whole adventure is worth the time it takes to get there, I soothe my turbulent mind by reading the opening of the Book of Genesis in the Amplified Bible. Like an aircraft marshaller dressed in neon and waving LED signal bats, its words calmly but firmly direct me to a smooth landing, and I realize the world was never mine to direct. It was always and always will be out of my hands. All I can do is wait out the darkness. Morning is sure to come: 

In the beginning God, Elohim, created by forming from nothing, the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void or a waste and emptiness, and darkness was upon the face of the deep primeval ocean that covered the unformed earth. The Spirit of God was moving, hovering and brooding, over the face of the waters. And God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. God saw that the light was good, pleasing and useful, and He affirmed and sustained it; and God separated the light distinguishing it from the darkness. And God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.

The day I learned there was more than just this creation story—and even older ones at that—I didn’t sleep well that night. Hiding beneath the darkness covering our bedroom, I lay beside my ever-faithful husband and secretly wondered, “Why this story and not all the others?” I felt like John the Baptist sitting in Herod’s jail and facing execution, sending out one last question to Jesus: “Are you the one we’ve been expecting, or should we wait for someone else?” I worried that if I didn’t believe in this creation story, it would be off with my head. To deny this story would be to chop off everything I thought I knew. 

In truth, I suppose I knew that the Genesis story wasn’t the first one about creation ever written. I mean, I was a reasonably intelligent adult. I’d been to college. I’d read some books and heard some things. So I knew it wasn’t the only tale to be told about the origins of the world. The problem wasn’t what I knew, but what I believed. And I believed it was the only one, the best one, the only true one. 

But this wasn’t the first time my origins had been upended and rearranged. 

When I was 16 years old, my mother told me my real origin story. The story I didn’t know. Yes, I was born in Cleveland. And yes, she was my mother. But my father—well, that story was different than the one I’d been given. The cuter story that was my beginning went like this: 

My Mother: The day we brought you home, your brother was so mad because he’d wanted a brother. He already had three sisters. He told me and your daddy, ‘Take her back!’ He was serious.

Me: What was I like?

My Mother: You were so quiet. You were my only baby that never gave me any trouble sleeping. So easy.

And with that story, light stepped out from a dark nothingness, and I was made whole. Only thing was, in my real story, the words “me and your daddy” were covered in a darkness belonging to an older story. Not until my mother revealed the truth about my biological father could that darkness break into light. 

In his book The Genesis Meditations, Neil Douglass-Klotz writes, “By experiencing the creation story as our own personal story, we have the same opportunity to recreate and renew ourselves, as our ancestors did, and to find deeper connection with the divine in our everyday lives.” 

At 16, perhaps to be made anew wasn’t such a bad thing. Maybe my mother had given me a gift that we can all give to ourselves, the gift of being able, for better or for worse, to begin again. 

When I apply this to the story of my Middle Passage ancestors, born in Africa, then again on the slave ships, then again on the auction block, then again on the plantation, and who knows how many times again and again from plantation to plantation until they were born into a freedom they could scarcely believe was true, I understand that who told the first creation story isn’t nearly as important as the fact that humans have always told creation stories. The fact of this says to me that we have always felt the need to be from somewhere, created by someone, wanted by someone. 

Maybe, essentially, the whole thing—the beginning before the beginning and the eternal end—isn’t about you or me. It certainly doesn’t begin with us. Seems it’s always been here, long before us. And that’s a gift you and I both need—the human courtesy to allow each other to just be infinitely created. Let there be light… let there be light… let there be light in each of our lives over and over and over again. 

In the Book of John, Jesus told Nicodemus as much as this:“Truly, truly I say to you, unless someone is born of water and spirit, he is not able to enter into the kingdom of God.” And Nicodemus rightly asked him, “How can these things be?” Any of us would have asked as much.

There’s a lot of debate about just exactly what Jesus meant when he said this. But I find it interesting that there aren’t as many debates, or even commentary, about why John wrote it, being that he was the only one to include the story—and it’s a doozy of a story! 

Nicodemus, one of the ruling Pharisees, and so most assuredly one of the chief players in the crucifixion, visits Jesus and, in essence, is told: “Let there be light. Begin again.” But more accurately, in Jesus’ native language of Aramaic, what we read as “born again” is yiled men d’resh, meaning “from the first beginning.” 

The Nicodemus in me, confused and exasperated, sighs, “Say what?” 

Luckily for me, Douglass-Klotz offers me the beginning of John 1 as an answer, translated from the Aramaic and Greek: 

In the very Beginningness
was, is and will be existing
the Word-Wisdom of the One,
the ongoing Word and Sound,
the Message and Conversation
that has not stopped
and has never started
because it is always Now.

Lying beside my peace-filled husband’s slumber that softly deepens into the darkness, I’m wide awake scratching my head with all this wonder, understanding at least part of this generous answer while unable to firmly hold any of it long enough to see and know anything for sure. I slowly drift off into fitful murmured dreams, my silent voice whispering endlessly, “Why?”, and “How?”, and “Wait… say what?” 

I sleep through the darkness working my way to the dawning light. 

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A Discussion Question to Answer in the Comments Below: 
What is your unique creation story?