back to the hillside: earth & breath

surrounded by the darkness in which the paschal light of christ shines, i read on:

"and god said, let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.
and god called the dry land earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he seas: and god saw that it was good.
and god said, let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.
and the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and god saw that it was good.
and the evening and the morning were the third day.
and god said, let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:
and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.
and god made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.
and god set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,
and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and god saw that it was good.
and the evening and the morning were the fourth day.
and god said, let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.
and god created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and god saw that it was good.
and god blessed them, saying, be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.
and the evening and the morning were the fifth day." (genesis 1:9-23)

waters, earth, light, moving creatures: we heard all these themes at the beginning of the beginning. it is as if the first two verses of genesis were one huge chord comprised of all the songs of creation, played for god only knows how long. as god said to job, he says to each of us: "where wast thou when i laid the foundations of the earth?" (job 38:4) yet even as he spoke to job by describing not himself but his creation, so he has spoken to us through the creation.

earth, seas, grass, herb, fruit tree, lights in heaven, moving creatures that hath life, birds that fly in the open firmament, great whales, and every living creature which the waters brought forth, they all have their own songs, which god blessed and told them to repeat. the late-homing squirrels and the early-hooting owls on my hillside are here because the first squirrels, the first owls, "brought forth abundantly."

the story continues:

"and god said, let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.
and god made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and god saw that it was good.
and god said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
so god created man in his own image, in the image of god created he him; male and female created he them.
and god blessed them, and god said unto them, be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
and God said, Behold, i have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.
and to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, i have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.
and god saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.
and on the seventh day god ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.
and god blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made." (genesis 1:24-2:3)

so here i sit, image of god, blessed, marking the completion of yet another holy, seventh, sabbath day, but starting the beginning of the eighth day, the first day of the new creation.

how am i the image of god? the navajo say in the whorls of finger- and toe-tips. hebrew, like so many ancient languages,has one word, ruach for both "spirit" and "wind." either translation in genesis 1:1 is correct, or rather both of them are correct. perhaps only one translation is incorrect. the wind, the spirit, moves in spirals and eddies, like our finger prints.

ruach also enables speech. again and again, "god said," and i, too, say the words, not reading silently but speaking the story. (in this discussion i rely heavily on david abrams' the spell of the sensuous(new york: pantheon, 1996), pp. 225-244.) speaking means using vowels. the consenants, which were the only letters in the original hebrew alphabet, "are those shapes made by the lips, teeth, tongue, palate or throat, that momentarily obscructs the flow of breath, and so give form to our words. . . . the vowels . . . are nothing more than sounded breath." (abrams, p. 241)

the breath of god, which introduces the first story of genesis, becomes more important in the second story. i use my breath, making in the darkness sworls of wind that my candle follows, saying those last words from the first story, "god blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made." (genesis 2:3)