 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
Click on the link below to go
to the ordering page.
to the ordering page.
From the back cover...
In the Beginning is a simple journey through the four paths
of “Creation Spirituality,” taken over four weeks. It is
designed for use during the four weeks leading up to
Christmas, but can be enjoyed anytime during the year.
By combining scripture with his own spiritual reflections,
minister and writer Donald Schmidt helps you celebrate the
season of Advent and prepare for Christmas. The scriptures
explored each day are based on readings from Emerging
Word: A Creation Spirituality Lectionary. A unique blend of
humor, theological insight, and storytelling make this book a
memorable journey.
Let the daily readings from In the Beginning
accompany you through Advent, or any other part of your
faith. Find meaning in the season and celebrate God’s word!
Donald Schmidt is an ordained minister with the United
Church of Christ and has four university degrees in
theology and spirituality. He has served in parish ministry
for more than twenty years and has written for several
religious journals. Schmidt is a parent and grandparent and
lives in Hawaii.
From inside the book...
Prelude: Original Blessing
Genesis 1:1, King James Version
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
Life is either a great adventure or nothing.
—Helen Keller.
In the beginning—in the very beginning—God.
Years ago, when the Apollo 8 astronauts first orbited the
moon, they had the phenomenal experience of seeing an
earth-rise: our entire planet, in the galactic distance, behind
the moon.
The image appeared on a U.S. postage stamp, with the
caption “In the beginning, God …”
Good words: In the beginning, God…
It’s a bit of an oxymoron if you think about it. The text
says “in the beginning” and then goes on to say that there
was something before the beginning. Two somethings,
actually: total chaos (formless void), and God. It’s just that
our comprehension of beginning really only goes back to
our beginning. If not necessarily our human beginning, then
at least our cosmic beginning. We don’t have the capacity
to comprehend the fact that there is no beginning. Because
there was always God, and God didn’t have a beginning.
God always was, even before forever.
But for us, there is a beginning, and so we begin our
journey—our human journey, our spiritual journey, our
Advent journey—with a story of beginnings.
The story begins with the statement that God was there,
at the outset, creating things. Creating things with words.
More precisely, making sense out of things.
God speaks, and it is so. The formless void (I love the
Hebrew word for this: tohu v’vohu—one of my university
professors said the word is best translated “gobbledygook”)
begins to coalesce from nothingness into somethingness.
Because God decreed it. Because God said, “let there be.”
That’s all it took.
God’s word has amazing power in this story. It sets the
stage for more and more of what is to come. God’s word
throughout the biblical story is going to have even more
amazing power. We’ll see this as the gospel of John retells
Genesis 1:1 with parallels to Jesus. God’s word made flesh.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Let’s focus on the word
back at the beginning.
Words take breath, and it is God’s breath, God’s spirit,
that is hovering over the deep giving birth to creation in this
story. God’s breath, issuing forth in powerful, creative, life-
giving word.
And it all makes sense. The author of this story wants to
make that abundantly clear. There is a pattern, an order, to
this universe. We may not understand it, but God does.
God created it in a neat, coordinated way, so that things
would work together in appropriate patterns, with harmony
and balance. Not that these are rigid rules that the universe
must follow, as testified by the uniqueness of each living
thing, but rather that there is a way (a torah, in Hebrew) for
everything to work together. It can work. There can be
balance.
When life doesn’t make sense to us, it still makes sense
to God. And when it really doesn’t make sense to us, and
becomes overwhelming, maybe we need to take a little time
out, and look again at the created “order.” Get out of
ourselves, and experience the universe—or at least some
of it.
We notice the birds and flowers, the simple rhythms of
day and night and seasons. Leaves seem to know when to
fall, and water always knows to tumble downhill. Mountains
stay up (most of the time) and oceans ebb and flow within
their boundaries (most of the time). It seems the universe is
saying to us, “Life isn’t perfect, but it has a rhythm and a
pattern, and it can make sense. Most of the time.”
Now, I know that there are other explanations for how
things work, explanations that are true and accurate and
real. Explanations about a primal flaring forth billions of
years ago that created all matter. I know and believe and
affirm the understandings of science, cosmology, and
evolution. To ignore those facts would be silly.
But just as silly would be to ignore this Genesis story,
too. For, as a story, it tells us one way to understand God’s
place in all of this. Not how it happened, but what God
intended in all of it.
This is the story of the origins of the universe.
This is the story of original blessing.
This is our story.
Donald Schmidt. Published by www.iUniverse.com. (c) 2007 Donald
Schmidt.
In the Beginning is a simple journey through the four paths
of “Creation Spirituality,” taken over four weeks. It is
designed for use during the four weeks leading up to
Christmas, but can be enjoyed anytime during the year.
By combining scripture with his own spiritual reflections,
minister and writer Donald Schmidt helps you celebrate the
season of Advent and prepare for Christmas. The scriptures
explored each day are based on readings from Emerging
Word: A Creation Spirituality Lectionary. A unique blend of
humor, theological insight, and storytelling make this book a
memorable journey.
Let the daily readings from In the Beginning
accompany you through Advent, or any other part of your
faith. Find meaning in the season and celebrate God’s word!
Donald Schmidt is an ordained minister with the United
Church of Christ and has four university degrees in
theology and spirituality. He has served in parish ministry
for more than twenty years and has written for several
religious journals. Schmidt is a parent and grandparent and
lives in Hawaii.
From inside the book...
Prelude: Original Blessing
Genesis 1:1, King James Version
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
Life is either a great adventure or nothing.
—Helen Keller.
In the beginning—in the very beginning—God.
Years ago, when the Apollo 8 astronauts first orbited the
moon, they had the phenomenal experience of seeing an
earth-rise: our entire planet, in the galactic distance, behind
the moon.
The image appeared on a U.S. postage stamp, with the
caption “In the beginning, God …”
Good words: In the beginning, God…
It’s a bit of an oxymoron if you think about it. The text
says “in the beginning” and then goes on to say that there
was something before the beginning. Two somethings,
actually: total chaos (formless void), and God. It’s just that
our comprehension of beginning really only goes back to
our beginning. If not necessarily our human beginning, then
at least our cosmic beginning. We don’t have the capacity
to comprehend the fact that there is no beginning. Because
there was always God, and God didn’t have a beginning.
God always was, even before forever.
But for us, there is a beginning, and so we begin our
journey—our human journey, our spiritual journey, our
Advent journey—with a story of beginnings.
The story begins with the statement that God was there,
at the outset, creating things. Creating things with words.
More precisely, making sense out of things.
God speaks, and it is so. The formless void (I love the
Hebrew word for this: tohu v’vohu—one of my university
professors said the word is best translated “gobbledygook”)
begins to coalesce from nothingness into somethingness.
Because God decreed it. Because God said, “let there be.”
That’s all it took.
God’s word has amazing power in this story. It sets the
stage for more and more of what is to come. God’s word
throughout the biblical story is going to have even more
amazing power. We’ll see this as the gospel of John retells
Genesis 1:1 with parallels to Jesus. God’s word made flesh.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Let’s focus on the word
back at the beginning.
Words take breath, and it is God’s breath, God’s spirit,
that is hovering over the deep giving birth to creation in this
story. God’s breath, issuing forth in powerful, creative, life-
giving word.
And it all makes sense. The author of this story wants to
make that abundantly clear. There is a pattern, an order, to
this universe. We may not understand it, but God does.
God created it in a neat, coordinated way, so that things
would work together in appropriate patterns, with harmony
and balance. Not that these are rigid rules that the universe
must follow, as testified by the uniqueness of each living
thing, but rather that there is a way (a torah, in Hebrew) for
everything to work together. It can work. There can be
balance.
When life doesn’t make sense to us, it still makes sense
to God. And when it really doesn’t make sense to us, and
becomes overwhelming, maybe we need to take a little time
out, and look again at the created “order.” Get out of
ourselves, and experience the universe—or at least some
of it.
We notice the birds and flowers, the simple rhythms of
day and night and seasons. Leaves seem to know when to
fall, and water always knows to tumble downhill. Mountains
stay up (most of the time) and oceans ebb and flow within
their boundaries (most of the time). It seems the universe is
saying to us, “Life isn’t perfect, but it has a rhythm and a
pattern, and it can make sense. Most of the time.”
Now, I know that there are other explanations for how
things work, explanations that are true and accurate and
real. Explanations about a primal flaring forth billions of
years ago that created all matter. I know and believe and
affirm the understandings of science, cosmology, and
evolution. To ignore those facts would be silly.
But just as silly would be to ignore this Genesis story,
too. For, as a story, it tells us one way to understand God’s
place in all of this. Not how it happened, but what God
intended in all of it.
This is the story of the origins of the universe.
This is the story of original blessing.
This is our story.
Donald Schmidt. Published by www.iUniverse.com. (c) 2007 Donald
Schmidt.
| The Advent study guide referred to on p. xii of "In the Beginning" is now available! Click on the candles to download as a MS-Word file. |
