Beginnings - 4

 

BEGINNINGS.....

Beginnings.... The word starts with an explosive 'b' then trails into a whisper. 'Beginningsss...'

Full of promise and unspoken desire, it's talking to us. But more often than not the word 'new' comes to mind and then, before we have allowed the word time to breathe let alone talk, we are off, making decisions, taking charge. The whispering 's' is still resonating, but it's already become a distant memory. And decisions made, our new year resolutions are underway.

But what if …? What if ….? What if we stopped to listen to the echoing resonance within. Something is stirring in our hearts. And we are feeling so much, so many things all at once the roots of our past, our history, our country's history, the world's ... stirring... because, beginnings are always rooted in the past. The serpent reaches back to take its tail in its mouth and coiling back, the straight line of history becomes the figure of eternity. Back to the beginning, round and round.

They do say that history repeats itself, that we make the same mistakes again and again. And those whispering roots are talking to us, telling us who we are and why we are the way we are. And until we recognise the tale, we can't move on. We just go round and round, back to the beginning, beginning....

And back I go to my favourite gospel text, St John of course :

'In the beginning was the Word :

the Word was with God

and the Word was God.He was with God in the beginning.

Through Him all things were made.

Not one thing had its being except through Him.

All things had their life in Him'

The text resonates. It makes sense in the heart even if it doesn't make sense in your head. What beginning? We are talking of a time – for want of a better word, when God was and the Word was one with God and then …. all things came to be and the serpent straightened its coils and time, history itelf began. 'In the beginning God created heaven and earth'. 'Beginning' is the third word of the Bible.

Going back to the beginning, listening to our whispering roots, we become one with life again, all life and one with humanity too. Then we see how we came to be how we are, how we came to the edge of life itself.

Recently, Wiliam Shatner went up into space and looking back at our planet recognised light, beauty, life, a marvel, while looking the other way, there was only blackness. Death. And he was heart broken, because our beautiful planet is endangered, as are we. Yes, we too are an endangered species. From the beginning we sought to gratify our desires, exploiting one another, exploiting the earth and everything on it. Charging off on a vast ego trip, very few of us listened to the resonance, to the Word within. Very few lived in harmony with the rest of creation. And those few now suffer heartbreak like the planet itself. Back to the beginning. Our little lives are the length of a snake. Letting go our individual, personal desires and needs, can we not now listen to the voice of creation as, heart broken its whisper rises up into a wail of despair. But there is hope. St Paul insists it's down to us : 'The whole of creation is waiting for the children of God to be revealed. It was not for its own purposes that creation had frustration imposed on it, but for the purposes of He who imposed it – with the intention that the whole of creation might be freed from its slavery to corruption and brought into the same glorious freedom of the children of God.'

Can this humanity really become children of God ? If that is true, then there really is hope. Life itself comes from the Word and we have our life in him – still because the Word is in us. So, let us begin to listen, really listen to the resonance of his presence talking to us and through all that lives. So it begins.