Wednesday 25 May 2011

Beginnings


Every story has a beginning right? It doesn’t matter what it is, whether it’s history, fiction, science fiction, fantasy, romance and even a lie, they are all stories that have beginnings. There has to be a starting point, right? Well this story doesn’t have a beginning. You can’t pinpoint and exact starting point. It’s the greatest story ever told and it transcends time and space and a beginning.

The best place to start is with an entity. That’s already wrong, entity belittles him, she, it or whatever politically correct or incorrect term you want to use. I guess for this story we will call him, she, it, them, the Creator.
The Creator always was and is. That statement will and has confused many over the millennia, but its just one of the many things that cannot be explained away. Sure there are theories and legends but in the final analysis they all fall short. How can the Creator just have been? If you have the answer please, please let me know and together we will make millions!

Since we are human, I will use human terms to tell this story as best and as accurately as I can. There will be those who disagree with me and feel that this is way to flippant but hey I know the Creator to be merciful and I feel he is ok with this.

Since there isn’t an exact start, there is a need to start when the Creator decided to create this rock we lovingly call Earth.

So there he, she, it, them was/where. . . Again I have to stop at this point. You see the Creator is the ultimate power in all the universe and there are many things about him, she, it, them that we don’t understand. Where did he (I won’t go through it all again, I don’t want to run out of paper and kill all the rainforests in the Amazon! So please note that when I refer to the creator as him, I mean the politically correct collective terms of him, her, it, them.)
The Creator is one but three. Now I have you attention and your head spinning. No he isn’t schizophrenic! For thousands of years wise people have tried to explain this and have helped, but also confused us. One bright spark said that the creator was like an egg. An egg is made up of 3 parts (yolk, white and shell), all are different but at the same time all are egg. Well that might help you but it caused a stir among those who believe that the egg came before the chicken and lead to the Great Poaching Inquisition of 1538. The fact is that the Creator likes to keep us guessing about some stuff and this is one of them. He is one person but also three. Very confusing but fact. That isn’t a simple answer and I hope that you struggle with it but don’t leave the egg in the fridge just cause you don’t quite understand it, there will be stuff that you do get, I promise.

Now that we have the confusing stuff out of the way, let go on. . .

At the start of the universe (that’s as close to a start point as I will get), the Creator decided to create. And so that’s what he did. There was no one else around to see it yet except him.
How long he took to create we don’t know, it’s not really the point. What we do know thanks to the Creator showing a guy called Mo is that he created. No one else did and I sincerely hope that I wasn’t a germ, blob, fish, tortoise, frog, shrew, squirrel, bush-baby, chimpanzee, cave person, human. That’s not what the Creator showed Mo anyway.
That’s were our first mini story within this vast saga (I hope George Lucas hasn’t copy-written that word), starts.

Mo was a brave man for reasons that you will find out a little later. One day he was on a mountain talking to the Creator and the Creator said, “Mo I you need to write some stuff down, it may take a week to do so clear your calendar.” Now you don’t want to get the Creator mad, so Mo set the time aside and picked up his pen and paper (more like chisel and flat piece of rock).
The Creator with the aid of a system he called cinema, which he told Mo would become popular only in the 20th Century, showed Mo what he done.
Mo was dazzled by the images of the Creator just speaking and things being created out of nothing because there was nothing. He said light and Mo saw the sun explode into space, stars popping up all over the sky and a weird grey rock appear that men would later think going to was worth spending enough money on that could have prevented starvation in Africa for twenty years.
The creator said lion and a lion happened. And so on until Mo saw mountains, seas, fish, canyons, rivers, birds etc. He was so dazzled by it all that he didn’t realise how long they had been watching the screen.
“That’s amazing. I don’t have words,” he told the creator. The Creator just smiled, “You haven’t even seen the best bit yet.”
The Creator explained that for the next creation he had to get his hands dirty. He didn’t just speak he actually sculpted something. “Look here,” he showed Mo what looked like a lump of mud and how he shaped it. At first Mo didn’t quite get it but soon it became clear what the creator was making. It was a person, a male person to be exact. In is best narrator voice, the Creator echoed, “Now that the dude is shaped he needs to live so I will give him extreme CPR.” Soon the new person was taking huge gulps of air, getting up and looking around.
“This was the first person that I made.” Spoke the Creator, “People were my best works of art as I made the world. I made them a bit like me,” he continued, “you see Mo, unlike everything else that I made, people will live forever like I do. They will never cease to be, even when the world ends and let me tell you Mo that’s a spectacular finale.”
Mo found out that the Creator called the first man Adam and that he was put in charge of the everything else. When Adam came along everyone knew that the boss had put him in second in charge and they gave him the respect due. Wild animals were his friends, he was kind of like the ancient original Saint Francis of Assisi.

Mo sat listening, watching and writing for 6 days, without sleeping or eating. Finally the Creator had a look at him and said, “You look shattered! Have something to eat and rest here for a day.”
The Creator liked that idea so much that he decided to make that the way that people function best, i.e. work 6 days and rest on the seventh.

And so creation had happened. Mo was flabbergasted by it all and struggled to take it in. “I can’t do this justice. Can’t you just show this to every new person? Perhaps have a ‘Welcome to the world: This is how it came to be!’ seminar when kids turn 18 or something?”
The Creator laughed so hard that the earth shook. “Mo I have always like your sense of humour! Just do your best and make sure that they get the point.”
Mo scratched his head, “. . . and that would be??”
Again that Creator burst into fits of laughter, rolling on the ground. The mountain shook so hard that the people waiting for Mo at the foot thought that it was going to crumble and moved a mile back.
“The point,” chuckled the Creator wiping tears from his eyes , “is that I created this all and that it belongs to me. And that I love people and my Creation.”
Mo gathered his notes and dragged them down the mountain. “I will do my best. Thank for the great show. I really wish you would reconsider letting people now experience this cinema effect?”
The creator went into fits of laugher once more.

Something new.

In the light of my last post I have been really challenged about using this blog more. So I am going to take a risk and start posting some stuff that I have written over the years. Among the usual bloggy (is that even a word?) sort of things I will post a series of short stories that I have written. I hope you find them entertaining and insightful. These stories inspired the name of this blog. Most are stories are from reading between the lines of the Bible. That means they are fiction and simply my attempt to understand the Bible better. Please read them that way. Theology is life, we are doing it all the time. While my stories reflect my understanding of God and the story that he has written in the Bible, I am all too aware of my imperfect understanding of it all. So here goes . . .

Wednesday 18 May 2011

It lives!!!!!


Today I had a look at my blog. It’s been over 2 months since I posted a new blog! I can’t believe that! Now I am sure you just love hearing this kind of sob story from someone who writes a blog. Well this isn’t an apology for now updating my blog, I am sure that you are busy enough in your life to actually care.
But the reason I started writing this thing was more for me than anyone else. About a year ago read a book that changed my life. It’s a book by Donald Miller called “A Million Miles in a Thousand Years.” Basically its a memoir about how Donald Miller learned to live a better story. Its not intended to be a self help book but the principles in it made sense to me and inspired me to try and tell a better story with my life, not just for me but for my family. Me sharing my thoughts via the blog media was one of the small outcomes of this. The reality is that I want to tell a better story but sometimes I get bogged down by other things. Its easy to allow the things I want to do to be overshadowed by the things I have to do or especially by the things I think I have to do!

Priorities is the bottom line. What is really important? Mmmmmm . . . lets hope I can do better in the future. The great thing is that a fresh start is always available.