0185: In The Beginning... A Story

... we must start in the most difficult place: in the beginning. We have to start where the story is not broken or befouled, when wild waves cooled sun-soaked shores and the choruses of birds carried over ebony cliffs, who knows how far. 

It was a wild world, all welter and waste. Unrestrained rivers carved crooked lines across sprawling green plains. The earth birthed bejeweled fruit, and untended forests clawed in vain at the roots of mountains. And God loved it, because he created it. 

That is just a small part of the story of the Bereshit, the “beginning” as the Hebrews call it. It is an old story, the first story told by God, and God is very old, and he is not always easy to understand. But, old things are often hard to understand. 

For this reason, old stories are abandoned, because they allude us. New stories take their place, stories that are not so wild, or weird, or hard to hear. In general, the more remote a story is, and the more work we must do to understand it, the more likely it is that it will suffer mishandling.

And almost every witch, sorcerer, scientist, and pseudo-philosopher has some interest in mishandling this story. It is not hard to see why. In the beginning, you see the end. If you want to control how the story concludes, you attack it at the very start. - Donavon L Riley. Homily on Creation