My wife and I had a getaway this past weekend and it was inspiring. We enjoyed great food and drinks prepared by artists. It’s amazing to see the imagination and creativity of the chefs. From the menu to the plating and the cocktail glass. The words chosen to describe the dishes and drinks are meant to stimulate your imagination so that you can foresee that which is yet to come. The arrangements on the plate and the glass are a beautiful canvas and a feast for the eyes. The ingredients selected to make them are fresh and delicious so as to awaken your taste buds and increase sensations throughout your entire body. An experience that comes together as you read, see, taste and savour. Each plate and each drink is a creation brought into existence by its creator and meant to capture all your senses. It is good.
None of these were put together in a rush nor were they put together at random. They began in the mind of a genius. Someone not afraid to try new things. Someone put ideas to paper and then put ingredients to the ideas. Someone created and re-created until the perfect plate and the perfect drink were formed. Words are limited in the way they can describe someone else’s art. As close as I got to those plates and those drinks, my words can’t appropriately capture the creator and his work. They are an oversimplified breakdown of what actually happened, a limited description conveying truth but not meant to be accurate. The best I can do is describe what I see and taste using words and concepts that I’m familiar with. Someone with a culinary background could use a completely different set of words to describe to you the same experience.
As I was enjoying a Lamb Poutine at the Andaz’s Feast & Revel, it got me thinking.
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Maybe it began with a spark, or as some have called it, a bang! A big bang. How could it be otherwise? Life in the hands of creative genius. Free from the limits of time and not confined by due dates or someone else’s timeline, God began shaping his canvas. With no one telling him his project needed to be completed within a certain number of days, he began his endless work of art. One day as one thousand and one thousand days as one. Stroke after stroke. Breath after breath. Movement after movement. Attempt after attempt. Color after color. Each step slowly shaped into its next form like a potter shapes her clay. Declaring as good every step, every detail, every addition, every change.
As we ate, I was sharing why I think, for example, that reading Genesis 1 and concluding that God created the entire universe in a literal 6 days just a few thousand years ago lacks imagination, understanding and, I would add, robs and discredits God. If God is eternal, why is it so difficult to imagine he could have been busy shaping the universe for millions and even billions of years. He’s always been there, and he doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, so why the rush? Our growing understanding of how the world works at the very least makes it plausible even if we don’t have all the pieces and are just scratching the surface. Why couldn’t he be slowly shaping and designing the world we know? Given the quantity of galaxies currently identified in the universe and all those our telescopes have likely not yet reached, it stands to reason that there might be much more going on out there than we can grasp. The chef is capable of much more than words can describe. Not grasping it all is not an excuse for not dreaming. Not fully comprehending is not an excuse for rejecting ideas simply because they don’t line up with what we had previously believed to be the truth. It’s a beautiful and wonderful thing to grow in our understanding of the world and universe we live in as we discover new facts. Just as we are limited in our ability to describe what we now know, so were the authors who wrote texts like Genesis 1. They communicated the reality of a world desired and created by a loving God. They did not claim to know how it had come to be but simply that it had.
When my lamb poutine was brought to me I had little idea how it had come to be but there it was. If I tried to describe it, you would literally think I was describing a cake and I would not be lying. Yet, it was a poutine. Just not the traditional kind.
I’ve been thinking about fitness. I’ve tried many workout routines in my time and have found that most of them simply don’t fit in very nicely with the daily rhythms of an ordinary joe. Many of them require that I go out of my way to get them done. Others are expensive and simply not appealing.
A few days ago, I hit 40. I’m not much of a birthday person so I can’t say it’s a big deal. I think people around me enjoy it way more than I do. Is it because I’m boring, dull and lack the ability to simply have fun? Maybe. Maybe not. I can seriously overthink this.