I love summer. Check that. I’m IN LOVE with summer. Positively pixilated. The overwhelming generosity of the season makes me giddy. Fat, juicy leaves in 179 shades of green … gazillions and bajillions of them. Corn … bushel baskets, silos, boxcars full of it. More black-eyed susans, more heat, more butterflies, more sun, more baby birds, more lightning, more peaches, more sweat, more potato bugs than I can wrap my mind around. Nature models for me an open-handed generosity that I can strive, but only fail, to emulate. Sigh.
I’ve been wondering about the folks at BP … the decision makers … the ones whose eyes lit up at the prospect of millions and billions in profit. The ones who embraced greed. Do any of them now wake up at 4 in the morning … that hour of the black dogs, when all the energy in the room is dark and merciless? Do they stare wide eyed into that darkness and feel an awful interior emptiness?
From that question I began noodling around with the problem of how to illustrate sin. Not a particular sin, but the essence of sin. Yes. I know that these days the word sin isn’t fashionable. Quaint. Almost embarrassing. But I like its no-nonsense energy.
One way I look at it … sin is that which holds us separate from God’s energy.
On one hand we have technology … so chic, so sexy, so today … with the power to unlock riches we could imagine only in our dreams.
On the other hand we have Creation … so old, so stubborn, so unforgiving … with the power to sustain us eternally.
How can we balance these two energies?
In physics, the law of the conservation of energy states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed … it can only be transformed from one state to another.
This is one cool law. A law I’m excited to observe. Just imagine the possibilities …
Lewis Hyde connects art-making with gift-giving … when art is shared in a performance or gallery, the creative spirit itself is transferred to the recipient … and becomes a force for community building.
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