The Beginning of Good
“In the beginning God…”
That’s how it all begins, that’s how the Bible opens and the Grand Story launches its great reveal.
At Christmas time, the most typical readings are found in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, because those writers give us a birth narrative. Well, they give us a birth narrative that comes with a baby boy. But I still prefer the Gospel of John’s birth narrative, which starts, “In the beginning was the Word…”
John takes birth and makes it… bigger. The Greek word for ‘Word’ is logos, and it means to embody a conception or idea. That which was is simply the beginning of something much, much bigger. Franciscan Father Richard Rohr has a preference for using Blueprint in place of Logos, so that it reads, “In the beginning was the Blueprint.” Stunning.
One of my all time favorite words is the Hebrew word Tov, which most commonly translates as Good. In the creation poem we read that the Divine keeps calling everything Tov, and then we read that the initial creative process is topped off with the wording, tov meode, which means very good. The Divine saw all that was made, and it was tov meode.
Hebrew is a very small language, as in a small amount of words available, but it’s a massive language in how pliable each word is. Tov also holds within it the meaning of becoming, fertile, green and prosperous.
This new creation is just getting started, it has now fully entered into the becoming phase. It’s fresh. fertile. green. This new thing is loaded with possibility.
Advent is anticipating a birth of eternal becoming. And the Christ is the Blueprint for all this becoming. This is true whether a person intellectually believes it or doesn’t believe it, because we all embody becoming. It’s much more interesting, powerful, and helpful to awaken to the truth of one’s own becoming, because we all have encountered folks who seem to have their becoming stuck in neutral.
My favorite story is the ancient story of a guy named Jacob. This Jacob lives the first half of his life unaware, and so he chooses to live selfishly. Jacob leaves behind him a path of relational carnage, due to his lack of awareness for anything beyond his selfish desire. Rather than face up to his actions, Jacob runs. When he stops to sleep for the night, Jacob has a dream. It’s this massive, beautiful dream…
and when Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought,
“Surely the Divine was in this place, and I was not aware of it.”
Now, the Hebrew word for aware is incredible and really loaded, but I’ll leave that for another writing. What we need right now is to see Jacob awaken to the reality that the Blueprint has always been present, available, and simply waiting for Jacob to pay attention. Jacob awakened to awareness. This waking up began a whole new becoming for Jacob.
Advent is the paradox of us waiting for the birth of Jesus, who arrives to awaken us to the Divine who has been here the entire time.
That’s just so… good.
