Without meaning to offend anyone, I do claim that we mere mortals can also come up with a meaningful creation myth. Well, “myth” might be the wrong word, but how about taking a stab at answer this question: How did we get here?
Were gods sitting somewhere up very high, waving wands and creating the cosmos and our planet? Did an egg crack open and give birth to a variety of demigods who continually battle with each other for supremacy, while we mortals struggle to stay alive amid forces we don’t understand? Did some feisty amoeba get a bunch of friends together to organize a larger being? Did the eternal forces of lightness and darkness crash into each other, creating matter and ultimately human beings? Does a trickster god lurk in dark matter, waiting to pounce when we discover his/her existence? Did a comet hit a cooling rock and let loose little gremlins? Who was watching all this?
I often think much of fiction is about writing a version of the fables of old. Try one!
4 Responses
Good one! Since we’re writers, we get to turn events on their heads. You are a creative thinker!
The Beginning of the End
The war in Europe was over, but the Japanese refused to surrender. In fact, they even increased the number of attacks on the Allies in the Pacific. President Truman made it clear that The Manhattan Project was a top priority. Secrecy kept the rest of the known world in the dark about the experiments being conducted in the United States of America by twenty leading nuclear scientists.
The team was working in Alamogordo, New Mexico and the mission was to split an atom, something that had only been considered in theory, but never in practice. Ten of the twenty experts were in favor of moving forward with the process, and the other ten were adamantly opposed, including the Team Leader, Von Braun, who warned;
“We have no proof that splitting the smallest particle known to mankind won’t create some cataclysmic event.” In the end, the President of United States had the tie-breaking vote, and voted to proceed with the experiment.
The explosion was enormous, and a million times more powerful than this small group of men had anticipated. Scientists on planet Earth billions of years later would refer to it as “The Big Bang”.
The Beginning of Everything.
I think it all began with a hidden eye. In the beginning, the eye was shut. Behind that closed eye some vague thoughts began to percolate. There was a certain amount of “Huh?” and “Ummm….” But those thoughts didn’t go very far, plus the blackness behind a closed eye was confusing. It was both deep and shallow. It was both endless and bounded.
The eye was frustrated. “WTF!” it said to itself. Then it paused. Then it giggled. What a good idea: Copulation! But to make that idea come true, it needed some sort of partner, so the eye opened and looked around. The eye’s perceptions sent out thoughts faster than any measurement could track, searching for something to bounce off of. These thoughts were quite bright, enlivened by eagerness and joyous idea of potential.
But the only thing the eye’s enlightened thoughts ran into was that same darkness that had been lurking there when the eye was closed. “Time to experiment,” the eye decided, and looped its thoughts and perceptions around in pretty patterns just for fun, all highlighted by the darkness.
But whoops! One of the thoughts ran into itself, and an explosion occurred, sending fragments of thoughts in all directions. Over and over these fragments ran into each other, creating more and more thoughts. There were so many that the fragments of thoughts began to combine, and then take on mass and weight. They appeared and multiplied.
“Perhaps I am only mating with myself,” the eye considered. “Then again, perhaps the darkness is my mate, and all these fragments are our children.”
The eye opened wider, sending out thought after thought. The darkness accepted them all and gave back the wonder of their existence by showing all the possibilities of the myriad perceptions being loosed.
“Thank you for being my mate,” the eye told the darkness. And she winked.
As promised, I posted my “mother” story back there.