There are some things we cannot communicate to others or articulate for ourselves by using statements, spreadsheets or ledgers. Words hammered into manuals, mission statements and creeds fall far short. There are thoughts so much higher than our thoughts that they must come to us in inklings (they are all our finite minds can hold at one time), and even these droplets from the ocean of truth must come by revelation.
God used art. He used it way before He carved simple rules on tablets of stone on Mt. Sinai –these were only emergency rescue measures, concessions to the destructive dictates of our small perceptions and fallen inclinations.
But in the beginning was a love song breathed into the formless void so moving that the building blocks of all things filled the void, and from these vibrating sound waves all things began to “live and move and have their being”. He flung heat and warmth, color and light on the canvas of utter darkness, and, as James Weldon Johnson tried to put into words, he “spangled the night with a thousand stars”. But, oh, it was much more than that.
With humor, with delicate detail, with intricate precision, He created, not just for the moment but for limitless generations of life to come with built-in safeguards and adaptive potential we are even now only beginning to recognize and appreciate.
Yet all of creation was but a postcard, inviting us to something beyond. We can only imagine.
There has to be a song. There has to be inspiration. There has to be revelation for which we then need metaphors and pictures, drama and music and dance to hint at what we have perceived.
Some things are eternal not temporal, transcendent not immediate. Some truths are so immense that they escape even the most sophisticated of measuring sticks and weighing scales the human mind has developed. Glimpses of these truths overpower our systems.
And so we sing. We tell stories and write poetry. We employ the language of symbol. We dance. We dramatize for each other the insights too big for our formulas or explanations. And we believe. Yes, we believe.
