30 May 2010

What Has God Got To Do With Creative Acts?

On the Creator & the Creative Act:
"...the image of the Trinity was made in man,
[so] that in this way man should be the image of the one true God."
- Augustine: On The Trinity
"...God, as Godhead [Trinitarian], appertain neither will, nor knowledge, nor manifestation, nor anything we can name,
or say, or conceive.
But to God,as [He is] God, ...express[es] Himself; 
 without any creature...And without the creature, this would lie in His own Self
as a Substance or well-spring,
but [it] would not be manifested or wrought out into deeds.
***[But if] God will have it to be exercised and clothed in a form......it cannot come to pass...without a creature."
- Theologia Germanica  
In an analogical fashion, any creative act of the human mind has this characteristic:
"In thought, the sense of the setting and ones knowledge of the characters are  all present simultaneously. In [the act of] writing, something of these elements has to be conveyed in sequence."
- J. D. Beresford: Writing Aloud

Brackets [ ] inserted to help clarify.

20 May 2010

Just How Much Do You Think God Loves You? More than Mom

To My Mother

I was your rebellious son,
do you remember? Sometimes
I wonder if you do remember,
so complete has your forgiveness been.

So complete has your forgiveness been
I wonder sometimes if it did not
precede my wrong, and I erred,
safe found, within your love,

prepared ahead of me, the way home,
or my bed at night, so that almost
I should forgive you, who perhaps
foresaw the worst that I might do,

and forgave before I could act,
causing me to smile now, looking back,
to see how paltry was my worst,
compared to your forgiveness of it

already given. And this, then,
is the vision of that Heaven of which
we have heard, where those who love
each other have forgiven each other,

where, for that, the leaves are green,
the light a music in the air,
and all is unentangled,
and all is undismayed.


by Wendell Berry