Creationism

"See this?" he said, running his finger down the motifs, often called guls, after the Persian word for flower. :See how they are all slightly different: the lines, the number of dots? This is the hand of man. In a handmade carpet, the kind you seek, there can be no design exactly the same. Even if you try, agha, it's impossible. The wool thread may be a different size and they could make only five knots when before it was six. Or the dye is a slightly different color. Small things, but important. This is the beauty you must see. There is beauty in these inconsistencies. It is human. It is life. But the gift of imagination and creativity comes from God. So you see, these carpets show the perfect hand of God in the inspiration and the imperfect hand of man in trying to follow it. Listen well, do you understand this?"
"I think so."
"Are you a believer?" he continued.
"I am not a Muslim." I said.
"No, I mean do you believe in God?"
"Yes."
"Good. Very good." he said. Then you must think hard about what I told you."
Excerpt from The Root of Wild Madder by Brian Murphy.
Simon & Schuster, NY, NY 2005

 To me, God, Allah, Shaddai is the elusive and hard to grasp. God is hard to grasp because He is similar to those carpets which vary the knots and the dyes. To me, God is the Design, but the design is creative and exists as constant growth and life.

God is the corn and wheat fields of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania, not the marbled memorials of death which dot the landscape there.

When I first went to Gettysburg - when  was in eighth grade -  I entered the Pennsylvania memorial, and was immediately transformed into something I had never sensed before nor hardly since. But I walked with the dead amid the marble halls, and gazed with incredible longing at the life just beyond the perimeter of the shrine, where there was green grass, trees, and flowers in bloom.
I sensed I had joined the gods in unchanging death, in absolute immobile perfection, and I discovered it was cold. All who dwelt there were either dead upon their entry, or the marble drained the life from them over time.

God said the Perfect was the symbol, but the Life was the fact; I remembered God as a symbol, but if I wanted to talk with Him, I had to jump back into that endlessly buzzing bazaar of activity.

So, now I'm back.