chicken or the egg

being a kid of a once future pentecostal minister i grew up on bible stories. i have this photograph of me sitting on my dad's lap while he was reading me a page from this big "bible for children" hardbound book spread open in front of me. it might be the one about shadrack, meshack and abednego in the furnace, or absalom with his hair tangled up in a tree branch, or the apostles with little tongues of fire above their heads. i almost got to be named jedidiah - beloved of the lord".

the bible was one of the first books i tried to read when i was still learning how to, but it wasn't until the fifth grade that i finally finished it from cover to cover. i always got stuck on "in the beginning there was nothing, then the lord said let there be light"....

my young mind could not start to imagine what "there was nothing" means, i look around me, think of all the time that passed by and i cannot picture - "in the beginning there was nothing". i thought maybe it was a dark empty void, but then a dark empty void is something, right? the lord was in it, so it was something. and what was the lord doing all that time in nothingness in the beginning? i soooo could not even start to picture that, there was supposed to be nothing, but there the lord was in this nothingness. ("nothing's here, oh maybe there...nope, still nothing")

and then he said let there be light, did the lord come to realize after being in nothingness in the beginning that it was dark? ("oh christ, it's dark here!") and like, ah, light on what dude? helloooo... there's nothing remember? nothing! you let there be light and what would it light up? it lit up on nothing! if it lights up then it lights up on something, right? did the lord see himself then? was it that moment that he became something too? or was he already something in the beginning when there was nothing? (pardon the "he", tis too tiring to write "the lord" or "s/he/it")

it was a humanist pamphlet that explained to me that that's exactly the great leap right there, instead of starting from "matter" as the primary cause one must believe that in the beginning there was nothing from which something came to be wherein everything else followed. it took me until high school to realize that that was too great a leap for me to make, my mind simply rejects "nothing".

belated happy anniversary che, tis been great being in the world with you.