Tag: pithyism

A GOOD DAY IS ONE in which the artist heaves a stone and the ripples wash up smiles and murmurs.

(Or, put another way, “Blessed be the One who makes the makers.” I don’t know that one needs to “believe” in a “Creator” (or even a “creator”) for that metaphor to work. I hope not. A friend who’s a nurse speaks of the contention-avoiding “Design Group,” which both sounds cool and works well whether you take literally “impersonal forces,” Genesis 1:26 or anything in between. It’s a fine sport to find the universal metaphor embodying the idea of First Cause-ness outside of a specific agency, or even necessity. The Talmud attributes the creation of miracles to the evening of the last day of Creation itself — miracles as nothing more than well-timed and -intended natural occurrences — to which someone added “Including (blacksmith) tongs, which were made with tongs.” When I speak of First Causenesslessness, or even God, it is to just this sort of chicken-or-egg, we’re-all-here-now paradoxical origin as shrouded in mystery as the moment the first fish slithered ashore into the evolutionary chain. Somewhere or somewhen is a moment past which everything was different: the tongs were used, the chicken hatched, the amphibian evolved. It really doesn’t matter what we call it. What matters is that creating puts your hands on the moment of creation (or, if you like, the Moment of Creation). It brings something into the world that wasn’t there before — among other things, beauty, solidified intent, and self-evidence of simple existence.)

(None of which, unfortunately, fits on a bumpersticker. Ah, conciseness! thou’rt a fickle mistress.)