IN THE BEGINNING there was the void. There was a flash and a bang. And Things started expanding. Again.
(Which is to say that they had expanded before, and contracted. And this time Things were expanding. Again.)
Except: there could not have been a bang, really, not even a boom or a poof or a fizzle. There is no sound in a vacuum, and the void was nothing if not a vacuum. Anyway, nobody heard it.
So what was there? One moment there was nothing, and then there was a something so big that it is still expanding, after billions and billions of years. Some of the little bits of that original something glow in the sky at night, and we can even see the closest glowing bit during the daytime. It is warmth, and It is Life, and we see more of It at some times than others. People have called It different names: "Sol," "Father," "Ra." The names do not matter, not really. It is still there, still there, still. There.
But people are a long way off yet. Back to "IN THE BEGINNING." First Things first. First there were Things, and It was one of those Things. And It was warm, and It was Life, and there was Life here on one of the conglomerations of other Things that circled around It. And Life was small, at least at first. Life got bigger. Life grew gills and legs and wings, and Life decided it enjoyed sand as much as water, and earth as much as sand, and sky as much as earth. Life even decided it could make a place for itself in the volcano and under the ice, though without the gills and the legs and the wings. Life was nothing if not amenable to places amenable to Life.
Oh: there were volcanoes. And there was ice. And there was sky and earth and sand and water. And other Things, too. But those Things are only things, and Life was concerning itself with other matters. Life was concerning itself with bugs and spiders and parrots and lemurs and butterflies and lions and tigers and bears and (oh my!) people, and people looked really funny at first. Hairy and thick and coarse and generally not the kind of people people would invite for dinner.
And people moved, and people prospered, and people eventually stopped dragging their knuckles when they moved and prospered. They started walking upright, and people found that walking upright gave them a better view of It. And in the course of Time--another thing people found it advantageous to invent--people started seeing It for what It might be, metaphorically and literally.
They made offerings to It, in the hopes that It would continue to shine and be merciful. Some of those offerings bleated and bucked because they could not understand their importance in the scheme of Things. Some of those offerings screamed words known to the people watching, but the words never lasted long.
And It continued to shine and be merciful--though more merciful at some times than at others. And people dug the good times, and they suffered the bad times in the hopes that the good times would follow. People knew that It was fickle, and yet somehow constant in Its fickleness. Some people started wearing little hats or big coils of fabric on their heads because they thought It might be watching them. Judging them. They thought It might see the bad things they do, their nighttime things. Yet there It is the next morning, just like the day before.
Maybe they know that It will expand and burst into giant tongues of flame like other things in the nighttime. Because It will, eventually. Maybe they feel better hedging their bets until then.They turn their heads to It when they have a question, a want, a need, but they avoid staring directly at It. Because they know one thing for certain: you can ask It a question ("Whywhenhow?"), but It provides no answers. It does not reply. It need not reply.
And that, as the wise man knows, is Power.
