In the Beginning...

In the beginning there was the quiet.
God was at peace.
And it was good.
God then thought,
"What if I were to disturb the peace?"
And with the thought, the peace was disturbed.
This led to the creation of the Universe.

God realized immediately what He had done and smiled.
In fact, He knew what He was going to do already.
He knew exactly what He had wrought, and He was glad.
He could simply reestablish the peace and harmony of the quiet.
He could destroy the Universe with another thought.
He could destroy it all.
Yet He created something.
And it was good.

God reflected upon his Creation.
"What if I were to let it grow?"
And so, it grew. In a Big Bang!

God watched as it grew.
Wherever his eyes played across the void
Galaxies and stars blossomed.
Here was a puzzle to solve.
These fireballs could destroy and create.
Just as He could.

God thought,
"Here is my grand puzzle.
I already hold the solution.
Now I must create something to solve it also.
To please me that I could create such a clever thing
that it would seek My ultimate truths, and love, and beauty.
With consciousness, faith, wisdom and joy."
And so, all manner of life came into being in His Creation.

God thought,
"Whatever you reward, you will get more of."
So He rewarded each creature as He saw fit.
And those that He rewarded were fruitful and multiplied.
And those that were not rewarded withered and are no more.
Humans were rewarded nearly most of any creature on the planet.
Though God loves dogs and cats and horses and ants too.
Yet to humans fell the rulership of the world.
And to them fell the puzzle of the Universe.
To be solved.

The lifeless Earth was once entirely inorganic.
Then came life, and organic creatures flourished.
Flowers poked their petals up through the cracked stone.

Today, this often plays out as a literal human drama
As real flowers struggle to survive.
They peek out between paved-over asphalt jungle floors

It plays our metaphorically, as our hearts, hardened by pain
By misery and disappointment, turn into cold, hard stone.
And once in a while, our hearts are cracked open
By the hammer wielded by an Immortal Hand.

Life dies.
Yet life is reborn.
The deadly Ω (Omega) factor leads back to the A (Alpha) principle.
This is what people mean when they say they were "born again."
Or when we speak of rennaisance.
Or we speak of renewal.
When we laud the triumph of a luminous, levity-filled arsis
Over a heavy, dark thesis.
My mother used to sing to me the song,
"You've got to ac-cen-tu-ate the pos-i-tive. E-lim-in-ate the neg-a-tive."
Maybe if we had more songs ending on a high note, we'd have happier people.
Just a thought.

This is not the first post for "Flowers in the Cracks." There is no beginning. There is no end.

The flowers always were and always will be. There is now. There is the now in which you witness them. There is the now that you think of them.

And there is the then of when you recall them in your past. And the future when you wish to see and smell and touch the soft petals of them in the future. Yet the future and the past are summoned to the now by your imagination. It is all now.

The miracle of the flowers is that they grow at all.
The curiosity of them is why there are so many.
Each looks beautiful in its own way.
Even if they are sort of oddly shaped or smell horrid.
Even those are beautiful for their uniqueness,
Given the right perspective on the witness' part.
There are so many forms of beauty.

Joyous Thanks

My thanks to Gretel Ehrlich and other conscious and unconscious teachers of Aesthetics.
My thanks to those at PS 114. I'm sorry Mrs. Glaser. Thank you for the hug years later, even if I was such a stinker. I never forgot it. Thank you Mrs. Nova. You were my "Super Nova."
My thanks to those at JHS 180 and Beach Channel High School: Mr. Lazoff and Mrs. Renee Darvin and Mr. Bruce Degen and to Bernie Rattner.
My thanks to those who taught me at Carnegie Mellon.
My thanks to my mother for singing to me as a child.
And for pressing certain books in my hands, especially a good Dictionary now and then.
My thanks to my father and my grandfathers and grandmothers.
My aunts and cousins and all my kinfolk.
My thanks to my siblings, and their spouses and children.
My thanks to my friends, for helping me keep me grounded, sane, and whole.
My thanks to all those I have adventured with.
In the real world, in our roleplaying universes, or in the realm of spirit and dreams.
My thanks for the folks at Apple Computer, and Cisco Systems, and Microsoft and Intel and IBM and Sun and Oracle and the Free Software Foundation folks, and the W3C and the IETF and IEEE and ISO and Yahoo and Google and Amazon.com and Wikipedia and Blogger and Frappr, and everyone in every project around the world that is building this massive collective consciousness record and truly mass media.
My thanks to all those who have introduced me to the world of memes and mnemonics and semiotics.
My thanks to all those who have celebrated healthy, hospitable human religious worship and kept the faith, in whatever form.
My thanks to the artists, scientists, craftspeople and engineers of the world, the parents and pet owners and all those who have maintained a right livelihood, who have shared with me their light.
If you are reading this and say, "Hey! Where's my name?" Give me a comment below and say hello.
Finally, my thanks for Ilona Lieberman, who begins this next great journey with me.

Onwards to adventure!

-Peter Corless.