Ground Floor Cosmology

The beginning of the book of Genesis lays the ground work of a cosmic vision of contemplative unity and oneness with God.  Genesis is written not only in the context of Israel's own conquest by other nations but also their competing cosmologies that worship creation itself as God.  Genesis deals with all this chaos and brings order and structure and rhythmic spiritual patterns to the universe.  The primal light of God radiates with the presence of the Almighty.  The whole universe is clothed in the glory of the one who created it.

This rhythmic pattern follows day one of light with day four with light.  Day two of the sky and waters below with Day five of marine life.  Then there is Day three with land vegetation and day six with the land animals and the food that comes from the land.  All this culminates with Day seven when creation is completed and yet ongoing, a kind of day that continues on.  This threefold arrangement looks like a cosmic sanctuary or temple where God dwells.  The seventh day is timeless and never ends.

According to Genesis, the universe is God's cosmic temple.  All of creation is God's temple to worship and delight in God's emanating and divine presence.  Time and space are married in this cosmic celebration of God with creation.  Genesis also shows the messiness of life and God's drama in the dirt.  Not only did God make man and raise him up from the dirt but God is willing to get his hands dirty and play and get in the dirt with His creation.  Dirt is the place where God's garden grows and expands.  Adam and Eve are created to serve and work in the dirt.  There is a kind of word play with names and meanings where Adam the man and adamah the ground are interconnected.

The snake offers self awareness at the expense of full potential growth and wisdom with God's help.  Man and Eve are tempted to self awareness and moral consciousness without God.  Rather than this awakening leading to closer joyful communion with God and creation, it does the opposite and separates them even further.  Animal predation, suffering, and death were always apart of the story and reality but now they take on cosmic dimensions and fuller meaning for our lives.

Genesis chapter three according to the early church fathers like Iranaeus is more a story about failing to ascend with God than a fall story.  The garden story speaks about growth and cosmic spiritual evolution which is what the human experiment is all about.  If Adam failed to ascend, we learn from the new Adam Jesus that we must descend first, repent, be broken, surrender, die to self and the world, so that we can ascend in God's beautiful creation as originally intended.  God is still calling his wayward children back into his paradise presence so that we can play in the cosmos with our Creator.