Creator

Creator

Tass and Jeremy and the girls are in England with his family in Chelmsford, Essex, and also enjoying some events of the Olympic Games. Kate is keeping us up to date with pictures. Yesterday they visited Fairsted church, where the girls’ great-great-great grandmother is buried, and saw the house where she lived and taught. Then to Black Notley to see the grave of Jeremy’s grandfather Douglas, whom I met and later corresponded with and considered a friend. Black Notley is near Braintree, said to date back over four thousand years; also near Colchester, Britain’s oldest town and once the capital of Roman Britain, where twenty years ago I ate the best oysters of all time.

Visiting cemeteries is an avocation for those who are into genealogy, but also can be a sort of comfort for folks who have lost loved ones -- which is all of us. All four of my grandparents are buried in St. John’s Cemetery. Pensacola. Their graves have been an attraction for me over the years. Seems as close as it’s possible to get to them, and even good for whispered, murmured conversation even though realizing they are not really there.

This year 2012 has brought the deaths of two very dear friends, both of whom are buried in Greenwood Cemetery, and their graves are not far apart, a short stroll. Norman is not there and Bill is not there, but where else to go? 

The marker is on Norman’s grave, which seems helpful somehow, unexplainably. Maybe when Bill’s marker is set it will help with my rage.  Or maybe only time: I can’t wait, because the anger has not yet even begun to subside.

We live in what we call “creation.” A creation has to have a creator, else “creation” is the wrong word. And all in creation are “creatures,” things created. In Cranmer’s eucharistic prayer we speak of “creatures of bread and wine,” which seems peculiar every time. Creatures? In the Nicene Creed we say of Jesus Christ, “begotten, not created,” a theological assertion to quash a rampant heresy of early Christian centuries. He was begotten, all the rest of us are creatures.

If it is true that we are creatures, then a creator, Creator, created us. One view is of a “clockwork” creation in which transcendent creator created, set things in motion, then left the experiment to tick along on its own. Another view, of which Christianity is part, is that Creator created (see Genesis chapters one and two) and continues to be involved with creation and creatures. If the latter view is true, Creator seems responsible not only for what is, but also, ultimately, for what happens. This gives us something, someone against which to rail our anger when things inexplicably go terribly wrong. Otherwise, argument with Qoheleth is pointless.

TW+