And God said, ‘Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters,
and let it separate the waters from the waters.’
So God made the dome and separated the waters under the dome
from the waters that were above the dome.
And God called the dome Sky.
And there was evening and there was morning, a second day.
Two sets of Jacqui Parkinson’s mammoth biblical tapestries arrived in the Cathedral this week. The boxes in which her Threads Through Creation arrived were labelled in a way which made me smile.
I’ve been particularly taken by her representation of the snake in the garden of Eden, which looks like a snake, a falling angel and (to my mind) a missile. She cites Isaiah 14.12-15 (the fall of an over mighty Day Star and Son of the Dawn), which patristic writers (and then Paradise Lost) interweaved with Genesis 2 to make it look as if it was Lucifer who tempted Eve.
In my mind the bible-tradition-reason trio comes out nearer to paying close attention to the bible as text, as interpreted in the past, and as interpreted in our context. The snake (all that Genesis 2 says is that it was more crafty than other creatures), the Lucifer interpretation (not actually part of the Genesis 2 story), and deep awareness of the damage contemporary knowledge can do, each felt to me to be there.
But it was the second day of creation in Genesis 1 which came into particular focus for me too. She has ‘God spoke light’ for day one, which I’m told is exactly the sharp way the Hebrew puts it. But she has ‘God spoke water’ for day two, which isn’t; the chaos of water over, which God’s breath and spirit moves, is there before day one.
And, although I’m not sure what this points towards, day two is also one of the days on which the writer does not say ‘and God saw that it was good’.
Saying ‘Light’ on day one was about separating light and darkness. Now, on day two, it is saying sky which separates the waters still perceived to be above the heavens and the waters below. What is it is the act of separation, of making space, of opening up, which is the fundamentally creative act?
It continues on day three when the waters below are gathered into one place, separating out dry land (which God saw to be good) and then vegetation followed (which she has as ‘God spoke a green earth’, and which God again saw to be good, the only day this is said twice).
The Cathedral’s new Chancellor gave his first lecture to mark the arrival of the art work, although he didn’t seek to respond to any of it.
He highlighted the chaos and dangers of darkness and of water being contained, and I pressed him a little to emphasise the spaces the separating out created.
He noted that God saying light (making spaces which are not dark), saying dome (making spaces which are not water) and saying green (making spaces which are not barren) over three days allowed the spaces to be populated on the next three days in turn with sun, moon and stars, with birds and fish, and with land animals including human beings.
He also hinted forward to Revelation where there will be no need of light (God will be the light), the sea will be no more, and death (animal mortality) will be no more. Jacqui Parkinson's work on Revelation is also with us, so that is where I'll need to look next.
