Creation Bible Study
Note: This is based on Genesis 1-2
As part of this project, we've met together as cast and crew to read and talk through the scriptures that have inspired this project. For this bible study, we read Genesis 1-2. When we met together, we brought a piece of art (created or found) that related to the assigned chapters
A few note-worthy points from our Bible Study that weren't captured in imagery or sound:
1. "And God sang". While we were talking about creation, one thing that kept popping up was the idea that God sang creation into being. It wasn't just weary words muttered at the end of a long day of creative work, it was a love song and as He sang his song, creation was made. Ruthie whipped up a digital creation of what we were talking about mid-bible study and shared it with us. It can be found with her other pieces of art toward the middle of this article (piece 6).
2. Refractive Light. Jackson presented the idea that we are refracted light, we ourselves don't create the light, but rather we are sub-creators refracting the light of God to others. Part of the magic of this project is that we are co-creating alongside God to devise this musical and share it with others. We didn't make up the stories, these were real people with real experiences and real emotions. God was at work with them in the same way He is at work with us. The beauty of this project is that we get to sit and tell the story to others.
Piece 1: found online (brought by Julia Chavez)
This one line drawing represents the unity of Adam and Eve in substance and relationship. They perfectly and harmoniously shared life together in a relationship wholly unbroken, like a continuous line flowing between them - Julia Chavez
Piece 2: Photographs taken by Sammie Burton
I've been reflecting on the fact that creation is a work of art. One which God gifted to Adam and Eve, who also are a piece of God's art. As created beings, we are works of God's art and He has placed us into an even bigger portrait, the portrait of earth filled with his majesty and bringing us to wonder. As I watched this sunset over the ocean, my senses were overwhelmed by nothing less than the tangible glory of a present and near God. Even during a rainstorm, God's beauty and majesty still permeates its way through the darkness. I think this is a reminder of the Garden, when human creatures walked with God through his artwork. Thanks be to God that now through the person of Jesus Christ and the Power of the Holy Spirit we are yet again with God, and instances like this remind us that He is indeed closer than our breath and more wonderful than we could ever comprehend! - Sammie Burton
Piece 3: Create by Parker Ohman (an original)
"The story of Genesis 1 made me think of the many things God created. We take them for granted and hardly notice them at times, but each one profoundly shapes the way we live and create. We create as we dream with and order what God has already created! - Parker Ohman
Piece 4: The Dust by Brooke Sweatman (an original)
This poem is written from Eve’s perspective talking to Adam as they take in the wonders of the world around them and the wonder of the Person in their midst.
Breathing
How sweet it is
To fill my lungs with air
When I know it’s not really my breath
But His.
And walking!
The way He laughs when we fall down
With that patience still in His eyes.
And then He runs beside us.
And dancing -
Beneath a canopy of green and feathers
That He twisted together with
His own hands.
And this task
To care for the place He made
He honors us with this work -
Who is the dust
That He lets it into His plan?
His beauty?
Oh To discover the world
With my own two hands
To walk upon the earth
With my own two feet
Though not really mine -
For I came from you,
And you from Him
Piece 5: Bloom (Bonus Track) by The Paper Kites (brought by Jessie Wright)
“Can I be close to you” represents the intimacy of God and man. “Can I take you to a moment where the trees are painted gold” shows the beauty of creation, innocence, the idea of God singing life into being and the idea of creation as a love song between creator and creation - Jessie Wright
Piece 6: Genesis compilation by Ruthie Wu
Ruthie (on piano) singing with Wheaton friends a song she related to the creation story!
In my limited understanding, I thought creation was perfection. When God said "it is good," I thought, "that is the way it should be," and have spent my life wondering how I can get back to the Garden. I thought the divide between day and night, earth and sky, land and sea, kinds of vegetation and creatures, were black and white boundaries that could never be crossed, like the laws that should never be broken. I thought too little of God's creativity, when the first five words of the Bible were, "In the beginning, God created."
The truth is, God's creation is beautiful, but God didn't say, "look what I made! Don't mess it up." Instead, God invites all who are willing to join and co-create with God, even if that means trial and error, messing up, and never fully making what we had imagined. - Ruthie Wu
Piece 7: Ezekiel 16 (brought by Kodie Warnell)
So my artifact is long but it's Ezekiel 16. I LOVE this passage because it holds the full weight of our sin but also the full weight of God’s tender tender love towards us—something that Eve probably knew deeper in her bones than maybe anyone.
Piece 8: And The Stars - Grace Pointner
I created a string of stars out of tissue and sort of draped them over one of my house plants. As I made them and draped them I thought through Genesis 1 and just how new everything was. I can’t imagine a baby earth. But I noticed that the stars were created after the plants, and this surprised me! I’d never noticed that before. So I draped them over the plant, wondering if the first vegetation of the earth watched as the stars were formed. - Grace Pointner
Piece 9: Mythopoeia by C.S. Lewis (brought by Jackson Heydt)
You look at trees and label them just so,
(for trees are `trees', and growing is `to grow');
you walk the earth and tread with solemn pace
one of the many minor globes of Space:
a star's a star, some matter in a ball
compelled to courses mathematical
amid the regimented, cold, Inane,
where destined atoms are each moment slain.
At bidding of a Will, to which we bend
(and must), but only dimly apprehend,
great processes march on, as Time unrolls
from dark beginnings to uncertain goals;
and as on page o'erwitten without clue,
with script and limning packed of various hue,
and endless multitude of forms appear,
some grim, some frail, some beautiful, some queer,
each alien, except as kin from one
remote Origo, gnat, man, stone, and sun.
God made the petreous rocks, the arboreal trees,
tellurian earth, and stellar stars, and these
homuncular men, who walk upon the ground
with nerves that tingle touched by light and sound.
The movements of the sea, the wind in boughs,
green grass, the large slow oddity of cows,
thunder and lightning, birds that wheel and cry,
slime crawling up from mud to live and die,
these each are duly registered and print
the brain's contortions with a separate dint.
Yet trees and not `trees', until so named and seen -
and never were so named, till those had been
who speech's involuted breath unfurled,
faint echo and dim picture of the world,
but neither record nor a photograph,
being divination, judgement, and a laugh,
response of those that felt astir within
by deep monition movements that were kin
to life and death of trees, of beasts, of stars:
free captives undermining shadowy bars,
digging the foreknown from experience
and panning the vein of spirit out of sense.
Great powers they slowly brought out of themselves,
and looking backward they beheld the Elves
that wrought on cunning forges in the mind,
and light and dark on secret looms entwined.
He sees no stars who does not see them first
of living silver made that sudden burst
to flame like flowers beneath the ancient song,
whose very echo after-music long
has since pursued. There is no firmament,
only a void, unless a jewelled tent
myth-woven and elf-patterned; and no earth,
unless the mother's womb whence all have birth.
The heart of man is not compound of lies,
but draws some wisdom from the only Wise,
and still recalls him. Though now long estranged,
man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.
Disgraced he may be, yet is not dethroned,
and keeps the rags of lordship one he owned,
his world-dominion by creative act:
not his to worship the great Artefact,
man, sub-creator, the refracted light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind.
Though all the crannies of the world we filled
with elves and goblins, though we dared to build
gods and their houses out of dark and light,
and sow the seed of dragons, 'twas our right
(used or misused). The right has not decayed.
We make still by the law in which we're made.
Yes! `wish-fulfilment dreams' we spin to cheat
our timid hearts and ugly Fact defeat!
Whence came the wish, and whence the power to dream,
or some things fair and others ugly deem ?
All wishes are not idle, not in vain
fulfilment we devise - for pain is pain,
not for itself to be desired, but ill;
or else to strive or to subdue the will
alike were graceless; and of Evil this
alone is dreadly certain: Evil is.
Blessed are the timid hearts that evil hate,
that quail in its shadow, and yet shut the gate;
that seek no parley, and in guarded room,
through small and bare, upon a clumsy loom
weave rissues gilded by the far-off day
hoped and believed in under Shadow's sway.
Blessed are the men of Noah's race that build
their little arks, though frail and poorly filled,
and steer through winds contrary towards a wraith,
a rumour of a harbour guessed by faith.
Blessed are the legend-makers with their rhyme
of things nor found within record time.
It is not they that have forgot the Night,
or bid us flee to organised delight,
in lotus-isles of economic bliss
forswearing souls to gain a Circe-kiss
(and counterfeit at that, machine-produced,
bogus seduction of the twice-seduced).
Such isles they saw afar, and ones more fair,
and those that hear them yet may yet beware.
They have seen Death and ultimate defeat,
and yet they would not in despair retreat,
but oft to victory have turned the lyre
and kindled hearts with legendary fire,
illuminating Now and dark Hath-been
with light of suns as yet by no man seen.
I would that I might with the minstrels sing
and stir the unseen with a throbbing string.
I would be with the mariners of the deep
that cut their slender planks on mountains steep
and voyage upon a vague and wandering quest,
for some have passed beyond the fabled West.
I would with the beleaguered fools be told,
that keep an inner fastness where their gold,
impure and scanty, yet they loyally bring
to mint in image blurred of distant king,
or in fantastic banners weave the sheen
heraldic emblems of a lord unseen.
I will not walk with your progressive apes,
erect and sapient. Before them gapes
the dark abyss to which their progress tends -
if by God's mercy progress ever ends,
and does not ceaselessly revolve the same
unfruitful course with changing of a name.
I will not treat your dusty path and flat,
denoting this and that by this and that,
your world immutable wherein no part
the little maker has with maker's art.
I bow not yet before the Iron Crown,
nor cast my own small golden sceptre down.
In Paradise perchance the eye may stray
from gazing upon everlasting Day
to see the day-illumined, and renew
from mirrored truth the likeness of the True.
Then looking on the Blessed Land 'twill see
that all is as it is, and yet may free:
Salvation changes not, nor yet destroys,
garden not gardener, children not their toys.
Evil it will not see, for evil lies
not in God's picture but in crooked eyes,
not in the source but in the tuneless voice.
In Paradise they look no more awry;
and though they make anew, they make no lie.
Be sure they still will make, not been dead,
and poets shall have flames upon their head,
and harps whereon their faultless fingers fall:
there each shall choose for ever from the All.