Tuesday, November 1, 2016

Delight – Let me tell you why God made the world


The Third Peacock by Robert Farrar Capon in one of my all time favorite books. It begins with this whimsical version of creation:

Let me tell you why God made the world. One afternoon, before anything was made, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit sat around in the unity of their godhead discussing one of the Father’s fixations. From all eternity, it seems, he had had this thing about being. He would keep thinking up all kinds of unnecessary things, new ways of being and new kinds of being to be. And as they talked, God the Son suddenly said, “Really, this is absolutely great stuff. Why don’t I go out and mix us up a batch.” And God the Holy Spirit said, “Terrific, I’ll help you.” So they all pitched in. And after supper that night the Son and the Holy Spirit put on this tremendous show of being for the Father. It was full of water and light and frogs. Pinecones kept dropping all over the place and crazy fish swam in the wine glasses. There were mushrooms and grapes, horseradishes and tigers, and men and women everywhere to taste them, to juggle them, to join them and to love them. And God the Father looked at the whole wild party and said, “Wonderful! Just what I had in mind. Tove, tove, tove.” And all God the Son and God the Holy Spirit could think of to say was the same thing, “Tove, tove, tove.” So they shouted together, “Tove me’od – very good.” And they laughed for ages and ages saying things like how great it was for beings to be, and how clever of the Father to think of the idea, and how kind of the Son to go to all that trouble putting it together, and how considerate of the Spirit to spend so much time directing and choreographing. And forever and ever they told old jokes, and the Father and the Son drank their wine, inu ta te Spiritus Sancte, and they all threw ripe olives and pickled mushrooms at each other per omnia secula, seculorumAmen.”

As, I said, it is a whimsical take on creation. Capon recognized that. But, it does remind us that the Christian vision of the world begins and ends in celebration. And that in, with, and under all that is – at the heart of everything – is the celebration that is the Holy Trinity.


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