Inspiration, Imagination, and the Image of God

There's a story from the cradle of humanity that describes God creating human beings by the power of his speech, and it says that he created them in his image, "male and female, in the image of God made he them." There's far more going on in these few simple words from Genesis 1:27 than could ever fit into a 500 word blog post (indeed, they've inspired theological words-in-response at a ratio of something like 1,000,000:1) but what I'm thinking about today is the fact that, in the ancient world, a king who had conquered a land would then set up his image (zelem) in that land, the idea being that the image would effect, extend and continue the King's reign even when the King himself was not physically present.   And in the ancient world's framework for cosmogony (stories to explain how the cosmos came to be), creation always happened through an act of conquering and subduing chaos.  So in Genesis 1:  God conquers the formless-and-void chaos of the world-in-the-beginning, and, once the wild and waste world is formed and filed with verdant life, he sets humanity as his kingly "image" in the newly-conquered-Creation.  The implication here (among other things) is that humanity is called to extend, effect and continue the creative work he has begun.  And the implication here is that one of the ways we "image God" is through the exercise of our own forms of creativity.

And with this all in mind, I can't help but notice that the words we most often use to describe the human act of "singing/drawing/carving/writing/making original things that didn't exist before" link it to divine things.  There's "creativity" itself, but there's also "inspiration" (to be "breathed" into), and there's "imagination" and "visionary" and "musical" (connected, of course, to the Greek Muses).  All of these words seem to be feeling around the etymological edges of that spiritual "thing" that happens when human beings act creatively.

I mentioned before that I started doing some songwriting this summer after a three year dry spell.  What I didn't mention then is how the dry spell broke.  It was the morning I sat down on the edge of the bed in the basement of my father in law's house with my wife's mom's old nylon string guitar (which I always dig out of the storage room whenever I visit).  I was lamenting the fact that it had been so long since I'd even felt like really singing, that in three years I'd had neither the time nor heart nor inspiration to say something musically, and that whenever I tried, the words always escaped or the tune eluded me. 

I was just kind of strumming over this sadness, and I started muttering some stuff about inspiration having walked out on me.  I happened to remember that in Greek myth, Calliope is the muse of epic poetry, and suddenly this image sprang up in my mind of a melancholy lover waiting for his girlfriend (Calliope) to come back to him.  Slowly the ice began to thaw.

Here's the song that eventually came out of that morning.

Hey, Calliope

Previously on terra incognita...

I'd mentioned that I am working on a number of new writing projects that are taking up time otherwise dedicated to blogging.  Among these is a collaborative theology blog with a couple of other FMCiC pastors that I hope to have up and running in a few months-- stay tuned for that. 

Another writing project I've had on the go since August is a new album of music.  This summer, as I dragged myself across the finish line and out west for a three week furlough from the ministry, I found myself sitting in the middle of one of those dark nights of the soul that the spiritually wise sometimes talk about. This isn't the best forum to unpack everything that was going through my head and heart then, except to say that in the middle of it, as God graciously and patiently sat there in the darkness with me, he started to give me some new songs.  I haven't had a rendezvous with "sister inspiration" in almost three years, and while many of these songs were darker and raw-er than any I've written in the past, this unexpected return of an old friend was a restorative to my soul.

I've been arranging and recording and generaly polishing them up in the last few months, and hope to "release" my new album, called Bridges, very soon. In the meantime, and by way of a sneak-peak, I offer this one here, based (loosely) on the darkest Psalm in the book:

nadir



By the banks of Babylon, that's where we hung our song

Cursed if we forget the tune, cursed if we sing along

     They said: when you reach the nadir of the heart, will he be there?

      There at the apex of the hurt and the despair?

Trying to write the final page of this tale of emptied hells

Vacant masks and leering laughs, this lie I know so well

     And when I reach the nadir of the heart, will you be there?

     There at the apex of the hurt and the despair?

Nothing left to hold on to, nothing left to say

Staring down the barrel of night, praying for the day

     He said:  When you reach the nadir of the heart, I'll be there

      There at the apex of the hurt and the despair



Never thought I'd be that guy...

When I first launched myself into the blogosphere two years and a bit ago, one of the things I noticed was the high number of blogs making apologies for "infrequent blogging of late," vowing to do better in the future (often these were stale dated, ironically, by a few months), and/or explaining why they hadn't (usually these included variations on the expression: "busier than a rented mule"). I remember, in those optimistic early days of blogging, committing to never being that guy; and yet, to my chagrin, I notice that a month has gone by since my last meaningful post. Not that I lack for blogging ideas-- I am replete with life-observations that need a good blogging-- but I've also taken on a number of new writing projects in the last few months (some of which I hope to share here at terra incognita in the near future), while the ministry at the FreeWay has entered a whole new chapter that has required much more of my spiritual and creative energy than it has in the past. All of this is my way of acknowledging that this fall terra incognita has been pretty quiet, and my way of predicting that this trend will probably continue for a few more months. I'll still post my sermons from week to week, and I'm not shutting things down altogether-- God willing, a perfect combination of "something to say" and "the time to say it in" will still coalesce-- but I feel I need to ease off the pressure of regular posting for the next few months.

In the meantime, here's the fifth sermon in our series on the Book of Philippians:

Philippians 2:19-30 "Making it Work"

The Book of Philippians (4)

Here's our fourth sermon in our voyage through the book of Philippians:

Philippians 2:-1-11 "The Mark of the Cross"