In the Beginning ...

My current artistic endeavour in creating a series of illustrations based on the first seven days of creation has reached a milestone as I have currently created 14 drawings to illustrate key elements in the first seven days. Each illustration is made up of the scriptures related to the specific portion of Genesis each one represents. For instance, Gen. 1:1a (In the beginning - ) is echoed in Heb 1:10 - 12, Isa 40:21, John 1:1-2,  Psalms 89:11 and 90:2 and about a dozen other verses from the old and new testament. The center element in each illustration is that portion of scripture in both Hebrew and English and some surprise elements are in the works as well. Thus far, I have inked a considerable amount of each illustration as well.

My plan is to have everything ready for an October gallery show my brother-in-law has organized. I am planning to show the 14 with some additional drawings and to have a book of essays and illustrations as a companion element to the primary illustrations. I have thus decided to offer my rough drafts here for your amusement.

Rough Draft One

FROM THE WOMB OF GOD, A birth story

We can only speculate on the dream that manifested and impregnated God's womb with possibilities,  on the conception of the universe, and the fetal movements of creation.

But as for the birth -- for that we have a story.

In the beginning, ovulation ached in the belly of God. As the desire to create Life and community welled within the Godhead's being, God consummated within their character to create the universe and conceived it within a womb of desire.

God, dreaming of what community would be, revealed himself as Love, his dream becoming a womb, impregnated with nothing but Love, manifesting Life. As the universe lay in the womb of God, the dream had already been dreamed about what we would be and what we would do with this gift of Life. God had already seen it through to the end. With the joy of conception all around, creation crowning, with God's vision of Peace and Love bathing the universe as it slipped into being, filling the void, Life bringing order to chaos.

If you are looking for God open your eyes to what is around you, draw a breath, smell a scent, touch something. Listen - even to the silence. God exists in everything. It is in our DNA - in the building blocks of every thing in existence. God put himself into Life as Love. He is the ache of desire, the ecstasy of fulfillment, the connection between people and the wonder in the big and small.

God simply is. 

We, all of Life, all existence, are in the lineage of God. We are all intentional creations, manifest out of Love - a desire for community and we all carry the DNA of the parent. God both in us and all around us.

God's dream bleeds across our cellular level and is reflected in our most innate desire to create. We are the creatives - the creations mandated to continue creating and communing. Our creation story begins with, "In the beginning of God's creating ...", because creation continues through us, and in partnership with God. 

God's creative lineage becomes evident in us when a woman's hand strays to her ovulating belly as her body makes its desire's known, primed to fulfill a need to create. She goes inside of herself and dreams a dream of community, of unconditional, inexplainable Love. Woman and Man bond together, becoming one in consummation, in partnership to creation. Life begins and her belly swells with Life, creation swimming in possibilities, suspended in Love. And then, when the dream can't be dreamed any bigger, Life emerges from the womb.

This is the birth story of creation, when Love filled the void.