Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Christian Piatt

Home
Progressive Christian
In the Beginning (A Theopoetic)

In the Beginning (A Theopoetic)

Last updated on: January 21, 2014 at 9:16 pm by Christian Piatt

In the Beginning (A Theopoetic) 2014-01-21T21:16:20+00:00 Christian Piatt

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Recently, I presented this piece at the Christianity 21 Conference in Denver, and then at South Broadway Christian Church later that same week, also in Denver. I’ve been asked by several in attendance to post what I offered, so here’s the text below. The talk was accompanied by a slide show that depicted a combination of Hubble telescope images, electron microscope images and artists/musicians. I considered making that into a video, with me narrating the text underneath, but it takes a lot of time. So let me know if this is something yu have particular interest in and I’ll try to make it happen.

In the Beginning

Art Saves lives because art is at the source of all life.
It is the taproot to the dormant breath of God,
Dwelling within all of creation, waiting for invitation.
What we think of today as art is not art.
It has become another product to be consumed,
Rather than a phenomenon to be engaged,
And experience to we have to submit ourselves to,
Allow ourselves to be changed,
And in doing so, catch a fleeting glimpse of
The author, the wellspring,
The essence of what it means to be a soul draped in skin and bone.

In the beginning was not the word.
All due respect to John, but words are the fruit,
Whose roots are found in breath,
The summoning of potential, gathering of energy
Into a single place, preparing, waiting for birth
Into something new, something beautiful, never experienced before.

But before the ruah, the divine breath, the inspired authority
That put it all into motion, there was a longing,
A space, longing to be filled.
The tension of stasis, longing for resolution in holy chaos,
In the beginning, was a thought: “what if…”

This thought was followed by a surrender to the ruah,
The breath that cannot be contained, but rather,
Once released into the universe,
Has its way with us and with all of creation,
It is the necessary tension between readiness and vulnerability,
Between preparation and probability.
We were birthed into improvisation.

Who knew that the source of all the creation was jazz?
No one had to know; it is an insistence that demands presence in this space
A longing whose culmination calls all matter into chaotic harmony
A perfect love that demands a response, a verse, seeking its chorus.

Turns out, the creationists and the scientists both got it wrong.
This reality isn’t billions of years old,
Nor is it 6,000 years old.
This universal nexus came into being
Just 87 short years ago.

In 1926 the cosmos concocted
A cacophonic spark.
When John William Coltrane made his mark,
The air was dark and heavy
To the point of choking.
America’s broken prism of idealism
Shone in racial schisms and tokenism.
The depression loomed just out of reach,
Would-be slaves, though free from chains,
Were not free in speech.
The black man could teach his children,
Just not too much, and as long
As they didn’t touch elbows with those
Whose clothes were newer, skin was whiter,
Who had a sense of veracity, or at least the capacity
To hold fast to these ideals that made real
The great divide.

In ’51, off of a stint with Dizzy
Trane’s veins trembled with the roar
Of the Dragon. For six years,
Heroin was his God.
Trane worshipped at the feet of Bird,
Charlie Parker, the junk-headed, smack-fueled
Bebop savant who was so good,
Even Trane wanted to be like him,
Play like him, shoot up like him, even die like him
If it meant touching the transcendence
Morbidly married to Bird’s dependence.

By ’64, we were knee-deep in war.
While some protested, others, bare-chested,
Pressed at the time-tested tenets of patriotism,
Creating another schism of American idealism.
Then Trane soothed the pain of ingrained,
Entrenched thought, his pitch drenched
Love-torn souls,
“Jetted in on a ray of radiance like the sun
to shine on those in our midst and
the still unborn in this hour of our great need*.”

He poured down like a cleansing rain,
Healing pain, washing stains of red
From seas of black and white.
While King had a dream of freedom at last
Malcolm said justice would come to pass
When the chickens came home to roost.

But Trane began to believe the power lay
Not in either way, but instead in music’s fray.
He believed melody could heal the sick.
He believed arpeggios could summon the rains.
He believed that, in his tonal dissonance
Was a cosmic constant, a Divine being,
A key to nature’s geometry
Reflecting life’s asymmetry,
Like the nectar from a healing tree,
Music was life in a dying world.
A composition of the spheres,
Transcending the style of his years
Transcribing the elliptical, orbital patterns
That gathered order into all matter,
Transposing the audible life stream
From dream to daylight,
From fantasy to true sight
His second heaven was life-bread, leavened
By perfect consciousness
Of a Love Supreme.

A love that doesn’t actually even exist.
It can’t be bought, commoditized, packaged,
Contained within sanctuary walls or legislated by old white guys
Who drive Mercedes with tinted windows and rest in the
Blessed assurance of fat government pensions.

As Jack Caputo, the granddaddy of theological improv, puts it:
The thing we seek does not exist.
It is the insistence that calls all else into existence,
The longing that yields creation itself,
The call that awaits a response.

And as co-creators, co-conspirators in this unfinished symphony,
We summon that same ruah, the divine breath
That gathers together our hope, our idealism, our longing,
And casts it out into the nothing.
And Trane said, “This is good.”

*Lines borrowed from a poem by Leon Thomas.

Previous Post

January 21, 2014

We're BAAAAAaaaack (CultureCast)

Next Post

January 22, 2014 Is Wealth a Sin?

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category atonement belief bible Bill O'Reilly Buddhism CCM children christian piatt christianity Contemporary Christian Music current events derek flood Easter education Everyday Sunday faith faith and culture Frank Schaeffer great commission Haaz Sleiman Hobby Lobby Homebrewed Culture humor ISIS Jesus John Paul Lederach Killing Jesus LGBTQ marc driscoll Mission Year Music My Jesus Project Nat Geo parenting politics popular culture postChristian prison reform Ray rice religion republicans sacrifice sexuality theology Uncategorized video violence wild goose festival World Vision young adults

Select a Month December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Who became Moses' spokesperson to Pharaoh?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Joshua Hur Aaron Miriam