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The essence of the Divine is love, but that love begets something else - creativity.  In the myth of Creation found in the Biblical book of Genesis we are shown a picture of a God whose very nature is creative and whose first recorded act is of creation, and the story shows the motivation behind this relationship is God's expression of Godself, which becomes a desire, a need even, to create being-in-relationship.  God wishes to have a relationship with someone beyond Godself, and that someone becomes the someones of humanity. Though God is in relationship with Godself (the theological understanding of that is summed up in the concept of 'Trinity'), God desires there to be more, an interaction with something beyond self and yet which is reflective of and in relationship to self.

And that creative impulse is reflected in our human desire to create. For many people that is found in their parenting, for many in their work, their music-making, their painting, their poetry, their writing, their dancing, their acting, their cooking, their loving.  For the scientist it is in the exploration and explanation of the world. The mathmetician in the beauty of numbers. The philosopher in their abstractions and elaborations on the nature of being and reality.

The artist -whether that be the poet, the priest, the chemist, the politician, the mother, or whoever - creates as an expression of her/him/them self and sets the result of that loose on the world, with a life of its own, yet a life which is still connected to its creator. 

God as the Divine artist is the same, and continues to love and engage with and relate to her creation, and in turn invites us to have a relationship with him. In this Advent time we remember God's act of self-expression in the life and witness of the Incarnate Christ, and our invitation to relationship with God in Christ.  

Art

Art is life, art is worth everything, art is glory, art is beauty….
Art is a step from nature toward the infinite, a mist carved into an image…
Art is a step from what is obvious and well-known toward what is arcane and concealed
                                                                              Kahlil Gibran (From the Gibran Museum)

 

Genesis 1.26-31a

Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.’ 
So God created humankind in his image,
   in the image of God he created them;
   male and female he created them. 
God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.’ God said, ‘See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.’ And it was so. God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good.