“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
— John 1:1
For purposes of this reflection, I think of the Word as idea—idea as consciousness, and consciousness as an expression of God. As we humans do, we think in ideas that are formed as words, symbols, and feelings while sensory stimuli are processed via awareness. There are images and teachings in religious traditions throughout the world that express this concept, sometimes in more or in less dramatic terms and symbols.
When we look at the world and into space on a clear dark night, we see a myriad of “created” things such as stars and planets. In the light of day we see even more clearly objects that appear to be in closer proximity, including both the natural and the man-made.
When we look at natural things closely, we can see replicative patterns. Man-made objects also tend to have repeating structures or similar structures across disciplines. The veins of a leaf, like the branches of a tree or of a root system, are good examples of such patterns.
In natural objects we are witnessing systems and events. We see what appears to be a replica of the branches and tributaries of a river, or of the veins and arteries in the human body. If we look even closer at recurring and self-similar structures throughout both nature and man-made things, we find fractal-like patterns. These are the smaller and smaller repeating patterns that make up the totality of objects, like fern forms, or molecular compounds in a repeating formation.
These same shapes and events, such as wave forms, can be found in micro, macro, and atomic systems. Complexes are like that too. A drama, for example, arises from an idea, an event develops, crests in a crisis or fruition, and finally resolves. A life is strikingly similar. It is perhaps, after all, another fractal-like expression of creation itself.
The song Grist, which was written as a poem, is but one expression and musing on this mystery.
When man creates something, what happens? What is the process? First it arises as an idea—and that has its own process—but I won’t get into that level of detail here. Then he designs or plans the construction of what he envisioned, and then he takes the actions needed to physically build or manufacture it, which includes pulling various elements and compounds together.
This requires agency, effort, and energy. Then it exists for a time, and ultimately, like all physical compounds, it decays and is washed away by nature, or it is torn up and disposed of.
The process of disposition and decay continues as a dissolution of the material back into its elemental form. The elements that composed the object are recycled back into nature via “smaller things” like microbes and insects, which send them back up into the greater food chain, and/or return them to the earth as original elements.
Either way, the created object disassembles by force or by nature and is ultimately recycled or returned to its source. The process just described can be thought of as a fractal-like expression of the process of creation and dissolution.
It all begins as a thought process and could perhaps end the same way. The person who had the creative idea and who set in motion the process described from cradle to grave can be thought of as a fractal representation, a replicative expression of “The Creator.”
As a poem, Grist is a contemplation on this theme. As a song, it is an intentionally energetic piece, for energy is, in the contemplation behind the song, perhaps the fundamental expression of consciousness—the force through which the work of creation occurs.
Well, I hope you enjoy it.
— Mike