The Weaving of the World

Before the first morning of the world — before there was a world to have a morning — there was Light.

Not the light of the sun. There was no sun. Not the light of the stars. There were no stars.

It was the Light that God keeps at the heart of things, the Light of the Day that is One.

And God was glad in His Light, and His Light was glad in Him, and Wisdom, His delight, sang at His side.

Then God began to make the world.

He did not make it the way a baker makes bread — out of flour and water, and done.

He wove it, the way a weaver weaves, thread by thread by shining thread.

And into every thread He wove His own gladness. And He gave, and gave, and was not less — the way a song is not less when it is sung, but more, the more it is sung.

And as He wove, He spoke, and His words were the knots that hold:

And the sky stood like a curtain. And the sea kept her shore. And the stars answered when He called them by name.

And the world held.

Then the world grew green and loud and glad.

Whales rolled in the deep like slow grey hills. Sparrows argued in the hedges. Foxes learned the smell of rain. Bees found out about flowers, and told everyone.

And Wisdom danced through all of it — the same gladness that had sung at His side, now delighting in the seas, delighting in the hills, and delighting most of all in the children who were coming.

And at the heart of the world, where the weaving was closest, where the Light shone through, God planted a garden.

The wind there smelled of myrrh and cinnamon. A river ran out of it in four bright ribbons.

And in the middle of the garden grew the Tree of Life — Wisdom’s own tree — whose leaves shone like seven small flames.

And in front of it stood another tree, standing the way a curtain stands, with the light of it coming through: the Tree of Knowing.

Then God knelt down in the good brown earth and shaped a man, and breathed into him His own breath. And from the man’s side He made a woman, so that neither would ever be alone.

Adam. And Eve.

They wore no clothes of wool or linen. They were dressed in Light, the way a flame is dressed in its own shining.

And on their brows there shone a Name — the Name that holds the world together.

God gave them the garden, and the whole wide weaving, to keep.

They called the animals by name, and the animals answered — just as the stars answered God.

They watered. They tended. They blessed. Wherever they walked, the threads held tighter.

They were the keepers of the threads.

And in the cool of every evening, God came walking in the garden,

and Adam and Eve walked with Him, the way you walk with someone you love.

And He loved them with the love that does not run out.

And the world held.

Now God had told them, from the beginning:

But one day a whisper went through the leaves, low and thin and cold:

“Take it. Why should you wait? Take.”

And Eve looked, and Adam looked, and the fruit was beautiful —

and they took what was not given.

And the curtain came away in their hands, and they saw more than they could carry.

For a taken thing tears.

Somewhere, far away, a thread snapped. The sea, for one grey wave, forgot her shore. And a star did not answer when it was called.

And the world shook.

And the Light went out of their clothes like candles in the wind.

They were cold. They were bare. They were afraid.

Their eyes grew dim, like windows fogging over: the angels faded from their sight, and the Tree of Life stood far away, like a tree behind mist.

They called, and could not hear the world answer.

They sewed themselves leaves from the tree that had left them bare.

They hid.

And in the cool of the evening, God came walking in the garden.

“Where are you?” He called —

not the way a king calls a servant, but the way you call for someone you love who is lost.

They could not stay in the garden now; the torn threads pulled at everything they touched.

But before they went, God knelt down, as He had knelt to make them, and with His own hands He made them clothes, and dressed them, the way a mother dresses her children.

Then He set at the gate a cherub, burning and bright, with a sword of light that turned like a slow star — turning, and turning, the way the night turns toward morning, to guard the way to the Tree of Life —

not forever.

Only until.

Outside the gate, the world was grey and sharp and strange.

Adam and Eve sank down upon the stones like two blown-out candles, and they could not stand, and they could not speak, and they thought that everything was lost.

But God does not let go of what He loves.

Down through the evening came the Word of God, the Light of Day One walking like a Man, and He stood before them at the gate, and said:

Then angels went into the garden, past the turning sword, and brought out three small treasures, and laid them in Adam’s hands:

Gold, to shine for them in the night.

Frankincense, to sweeten the air with the garden’s smell.

Myrrh, to comfort them in their sorrow.

“Keep these,” said the Word, “and when I come, you will know Me by them.”

So Adam and Eve kept the treasures in a cave in the mountainside, and they told the promise to their children —

Weep not. I will come.

— and their children told it to theirs,

like a candle passed from hand to hand down all the long dark years.

And the sea kept her shore. And the stars kept their roads.

And the world held on — waiting.

And far away, in the deep of heaven, a star began learning its road — learning, slowly, to answer when it is called.