Cre­at­ed Creative

“In the begin­ning God created”

“God cre­at­ed humankind in God’s image”

God’s cre­ative pow­er is inti­mate­ly linked to our own. In the first chap­ter of Gen­e­sis, we are giv­en the beau­ti­ful, essen­tial teach­ing that human beings are cre­at­ed bet­zelem Elo­him — in the image of the Divine (Gen­e­sis 1:27). A com­mon inter­pre­ta­tion of this verse is that bet­zelem Elo­him means that each human life is sacred. Every human life is to be cher­ished and respect­ed. But there is more in this verse wait­ing to be uncov­ered. In order to under­stand what it may mean for us to be made in God’s image, first we must more deeply explore the nature of the Divine. There are many sto­ries we could turn to to get a sense of who or what God is, and since God encom­pass­es all, each would paint a slight­ly dif­fer­ent pic­ture, empha­siz­ing dif­fer­ent qual­i­ties and attrib­ut­es. For our pur­pos­es, let’s go back to the very begin­ning of begin­nings to explore how God is first por­trayed in the Hebrew Bible.

The Torah opens with the words: ​“Beresheit bara Elo­him et hashamay­im ve’et ha’aretz.” ​“In the begin­ning, God cre­at­ed the heav­ens and the earth” (2 Gen­e­sis 1:1). Com­men­ta­tors across the gen­er­a­tions have con­jec­tured about why Torah begins with the cre­ation of the world, and what mean­ing these vers­es might have to offer us in our own lives. While it may per­haps seem obvi­ous that Torah should start with the begin­ning of cre­ation, the renowned eleventh-cen­tu­ry Jew­ish com­men­ta­tor Rab­bi Shlo­mo Yitzcha­ki (com­mon­ly known by the acronym Rashi) doesn’t take this as a giv­en. Rather, he won­ders why the Torah doesn’t instead start with the com­mand­ments, the direc­tives for how we’re meant to live in the world and relate to each oth­er (Rashi on Gen­e­sis 1:1). For Rashi, Torah is pri­mar­i­ly a book of laws and instruc­tions for prop­er con­duct. So, Rashi seems to be ask­ing, why is it impor­tant to know how we got here? Isn’t it more essen­tial to know how we ought to live, now that we’re here? Rashi answers his own ques­tion by say­ing that the Torah opens with this act of cre­ativ­i­ty to assert God’s ulti­mate pow­er: to con­ceive of God as the cre­ator of the cos­mos is to know that God owns the world and every­thing in it, an idea that then sets the tone for how we read every­thing that follows.

But what if start­ing with God’s cre­ation of the uni­verse is less about assert­ing God’s pow­er, and more about invit­ing us to access and acti­vate our own cre­ative poten­tial? What if it’s about com­ing to under­stand our cre­ativ­i­ty as the way we build, shape, and imag­ine new real­i­ties and rela­tion­ships? What if it is about help­ing us to know cre­ativ­i­ty as the most gen­er­a­tive, dynam­ic, and potent aspect of being human — show­ing us that all pos­si­bil­i­ties are born from our innate cre­ative poten­tial? As this first verse of Gen­e­sis con­veys, the God of the Torah is one who brings the world into being. Up until this point, the only thing we know about God is that God is cre­ative. So, to say that we are made bet­zelem Elo­him, in the divine image, is to say that we are fun­da­men­tal­ly cre­ative creations. 

From beresheit bara Elo­him, all else that fol­lows — the cre­ation of starlight and bird­song, soft grass and sweet nec­tar — comes from this ini­tial act of cre­ativ­i­ty. The open­ing lines of Gen­e­sis con­tin­ue, elab­o­rat­ing on the con­di­tions of this first cre­ative act: ​“The Earth was chaos and void with dark­ness on the sur­face of the deep and God’s breath hov­er­ing over the water” (Gen­e­sis 1:2). Isn’t this how all cre­ative process­es begin? We start in dark­ness, a state of not know­ing, not yet under­stand­ing or being able to see clear­ly. There is chaos: jum­bled con­fu­sion, ques­tions, all that doesn’t yet make sense. And there is a void — an open space puls­ing with ener­gy. We start by hov­er­ing above the sur­face, that which is vis­i­ble and known, as we gaze into the depths. And there is spir­it — our own, God’s, both togeth­er — that begins to shim­mer with alive­ness as our curios­i­ty is ignit­ed and engaged. All cre­ativ­i­ty begins this way. Formed in the divine image, cre­ativ­i­ty is woven into the fab­ric of who we are. We are cre­at­ed cre­ative. It is at the core of what it means to be human, and of how we con­nect to the Divine. To more deeply under­stand our own innate cre­ativ­i­ty and how we might draw on this pow­er with­in us to shape the life and world we seek, we can look to God’s cre­ative process in shap­ing the heav­ens and the earth.

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As we con­tin­ue to mine God’s cre­ation of the world to glean insight for our own cre­ative process, let us stay with this open­ing phrase of Torah to see what more might be uncov­ered in these ini­tial words. Com­mon­ly trans­lat­ed as ​“in the begin­ning,” ​“beresheit” can be under­stood in myr­i­ad ways. Pars­ing this phrase, the ​“be” at the begin­ning is a con­ju­ga­tion that can mean ​“in,” ​“with,” or ​“by means of,” while the word ​“reisheit” means ​“first.” In addi­tion to ​“in the begin­ning,” trans­la­tors have inter­pret­ed this open­ing phrase of Torah to mean ​“with the begin­ning,” ​“by means of the first,” or ​“when God began.” One of my favorite inter­pre­ta­tions of this line is from my friend, col­league, and teacher Rab­bi Benay Lappe, which she shared when we were once study­ing this verse togeth­er: ​“With the first way of see­ing or per­ceiv­ing things, God created.”

Anoth­er way of say­ing this is: ​“With beginner’s mind, God cre­at­ed the world.” ​“Beginner’s mind” (known as ​“shoshin,” in Japan­ese) is a con­cept from Zen Bud­dhism that describes a cer­tain open­ness and lack of pre­con­cep­tions. In his book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, Zen teacher Shun­ryū Suzu­ki describes it this way: ​“In the beginner’s mind there are many pos­si­bil­i­ties, [but] in the expert’s mind there are few” (Shun­ryū Suzu­ki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind (New York: Weath­er­hill, 1970). To cre­ate from a place of beginner’s mind is to delight in not know­ing, allow­ing our­selves to play, take risks, and be sur­prised by what emerges. Often thought of as a child­like state, to be in beginner’s mind is to drop any expec­ta­tions of out­come, and with it, the shame and embar­rass­ment that so often sur­face in adult­hood, which can inhib­it us from exper­i­ment­ing with some­thing new, or even some­thing famil­iar in a new way. To say that God cre­at­ed the world ​“with beginner’s mind” is to lift up an image of a play­ful, curi­ous God who cre­ates as a process of growth, dis­cov­ery, and delight — there­by invit­ing us to do the same.

Pause for a moment and see if you can remem­ber back to when you first heard of ​“God.” What image comes to mind? Chances are it’s not one of a play­ful, irrev­er­ent, curi­ous deity. At best, most of us were offered images of God more in line with Rashi’s all-pow­er­ful mas­ter of the cos­mos, which came along with the addi­tion­al attrib­ut­es of anger, remote­ness, jeal­ousy, and dom­i­na­tion. This is an image of a God who vio­lent­ly car­ries out His will upon His sub­jects (it goes with­out say­ing that this image of God was always ​“He”). For this God, cre­ation is a step-by-step series of com­mands enact­ed upon inert mate­r­i­al. And if we believe that we are made in that image, we also might behave as dom­i­neer­ing, dog­mat­ic rulers on earth. Yet, as we’ve been explor­ing, this isn’t the only way to view God. Far from it. How might we under­stand the cre­ation of the uni­verse — and our­selves — dif­fer­ent­ly if we imag­ine God as cre­at­ing with beginner’s mind? 

Jew­ish tra­di­tion teach­es that ​“God spoke and the world came into being” (Psalms 33:9). And as we read in Gen­e­sis, ​“Vay­omer Elo­him yehi or,” ​“God said, ​‘Let there be light,’ and there was light” (Gen­e­sis 1:3). Through­out the open­ing vers­es of Gen­e­sis, again and again, God says ​“vayehi,” ​“let there be,” refer­ring to light, land, oceans, ani­mals, peo­ples — and then there was. In the view of the all pow­er­ful mas­ter, God is a sole actor requir­ing no rela­tion­ship or assis­tance in these suc­ces­sive stages of creation. 

How­ev­er, as we are cre­at­ed in the image of the Cre­ative force itself, we can call forth oth­er images of the Divine. When we look again at these vers­es with beginner’s mind, there is an oppor­tu­ni­ty for us to view this word ​“vayehi” from anoth­er van­tage point. While the word ​“vayehi” can be inter­pret­ed as an order for some­thing to exist (“there shall be”), this read­ing flat­tens the cre­ative process and removes all rela­tion­al­i­ty, nuance, and serendip­i­ty. This inter­pre­ta­tion also excludes us from rec­og­niz­ing our­selves in this process of Cre­ation. Out­side of fairy tales and fan­ta­sy, no mor­tal crea­ture can make a snap com­mand that then imme­di­ate­ly comes into being.

I want some­thing more from the text — some­thing that hon­ors the alive­ness of the world, that lifts up the inter­con­nec­tion between me and every­thing I touch in a mys­te­ri­ous but thrilling dance of cre­ation. And if I want some­thing more, why would God want any­thing less?

I imag­ine a God who approach­es the raw ele­ments of cre­ation with a beginner’s mind, and allows pre­vi­ous­ly imper­cep­ti­ble pos­si­bil­i­ties to reveal them­selves. And indeed, when approached from a dif­fer­ent angle, the very same text sug­gests the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a God who cre­ates from a place of open­ness and spon­tane­ity — with a beginner’s mind. Rather than a com­mand giv­en from on high, what if instead we read ​“vayehi” the way we might in Eng­lish, as an affir­ma­tion of what is, or even as a rev­er­ent bless­ing laced with delight. What if instead of a direc­tive ​“let there be!” God’s ​“vayehi” is sim­ply an act of let­ting it be — notic­ing and wel­com­ing the artic­u­la­tion and for­ma­tion of a new real­i­ty as it emerges? We might imag­ine God ​“flut­ter­ing over the face of the deep,” as the text says, notic­ing flick­ers of light amid the dark­ness, like phy­to­plank­ton glow­ing in the inky sea at night. God beholds what is, the glim­mers that are appear­ing on their own, and in a dance of call and response, wel­comes them to come more ful­ly into exis­tence: ​“Vayehi — let it be.” 

Sur­prised and delight­ed by what has arisen, God paus­es to appre­ci­ate the var­i­ous phas­es and fruits of the cos­mic cre­ative process, exclaim­ing again and again: ​“Ki tov — it is good.” In our own cre­ative process, what does it mean for some­thing to be ​“good”? Often this word is used to des­ig­nate a judg­ment by a rec­og­nized author­i­ty: teach­ers, art crit­ics, par­ents, and peers. The acco­lade of ​“good” is most often used to describe the final prod­uct, while the process of cre­at­ing is often hid­den from sight.

In this reread­ing, how­ev­er, God cre­ates with a beginner’s mind, which priv­i­leges process over final prod­uct. Spon­ta­neous, impro­vi­sa­tion­al, open, and recep­tive. This is the cre­ative process that we can access at any moment. When we, like God, are able to approach the ele­ments present in our lives with a beginner’s mind, we become aware of the inher­ent good­ness and alive­ness in all things, and notice that they engage us in a col­lab­o­ra­tive call and response. Ki tov — it is good to see things fresh, to wel­come new inter­pre­ta­tions, to let what is emerg­ing reveal itself, and to wit­ness the per­pet­u­al motion of our cre­ative process with joy and reverence.