IDEA 8
Literal Craftsmanship
‘Really’ is often understood to mean ‘literally.’ … Creation literally occurred — but not as we have been imagining it — and is occurring now, around and in us, all the time. … what is often considered to be literal is merely a scaled-down rendering of a complex, abstract, or otherwise inaccessible truth. What is ‘really’ happening may be too great for us to comprehend other than in terms that are derived from our everyday experiences. (IIQ, pages 47-48)
Every creator works with or in a medium that both reveals and conceals the idea and identity of the creator. As the author of these words, I have chosen to convey by means of a visual, linguistic body, namely written English, an intellectual and spiritual reality that is too vast and profound for me to truly know, yet one that might never come to light except here.
The words you see or hear are a body that I created — created out of nothing, in one sense, since I cannot discover their source and spring, and yet created out of something, namely the shoreless sea of human culture and experience in which I was born, educated, and learned to write. What I express here is literally nothing more than a drop from that ocean of reality. Each creation is a revelation — a microcosm that may contain the same elements as those found in the ocean, but filtered or concentrated, and so neither exactly the same nor entirely different.
In the same way, the human being has a body made from dust or clay, according to the Qur’an, and one that may also, without contradiction, be the result of millions or billions of years of evolution. This literal creation, which we see springing into being with the birth of every new individual, is the material onto which is stamped the symbolic identity of a Maker Who is Infinitely Undetermined. He has chosen this universe, this earth, and this body of ours to be His medium, and is freely working in it as is His Nature — revealing Himself to us and in us, who are His miniatures, His little masterpieces. Yet what He conceals of Himself is infinitely greater.
There are many who question the authenticity of the Qur’an, wondering how and why the Supreme Reality of the universe would stoop to write His Will and Way in a book of finite extent, in one particular language, revealed at one particular time, to one particular person, and even mention the seemingly minor problems experienced by that person (Muhammad). But this is what creativity always involves — the revelation of The Great in the small, an ocean of ink reduced to a dot on the page.
The dark sea of ideas that pour through my mind must come out as tiny words in a very particular order, all with the proper spelling (hopefully). The reservoir of every dust-mote in the universe was drawn upon to produce today’s speck of wax in my right ear. And every fine point of Qur’anic meaning that clashes with our expectations of Who GOD is must likewise emerge from the infinite, irresistible creativity of GOD’s ‘Just So’ and ‘Why Not?’
Download the PDF version for free at Ideas Inspired by the Qur’ān – Mont Redmond complete version, or purchase a hard copy at Ideas Inspired by the Qur’an: Redmond, Mont: 9781738842506: Books – Amazon.ca.
