A MEDITATION ON CREATION

James Weldon Johnson was a rarity in his day (June 17, 1871 – June 26, 1938). He was an early civil rights activist, a politician, journalist, poet, lawyer, song writer and one of the first African-American professors at New York University.

His poem The Creation is a great example of how the text of Scripture, in particular these creation texts (Genesis 1-3), are not just memorized and repeated by the faithful, but creatively interpreted and endlessly reinterpreted. He takes considerable liberty with the details of the biblical accounts, but not with the spirit of the text. As you read it, you can hear the black preacher, and all real preachers of every culture and time, declaring the Word of the Lord in the tradition of the Prophets.

This poet/preacher is seeking to communicate, not mouth to ear but heart to heart, what lies beneath the text. He is not interested in simply making a photocopy of the story in the minds of his audience, but in using the story as Van Gough used a peach tree or a starry night. His interpretation reveals to us what we haven’t comprehended for ourselves. But when it is revealed we know immediately that it has always been there. And this, of course, is genius, whether of the artist, poet, preacher, musician or mathematician; that mysterious ability to see and to communicate what is far too obvious for the rest of us to see.

The Creation by James Weldon Johnson

And God stepped out on space,

And he looked around and said:

I'm lonely—

I'll make me a world.

And far as the eye of God could see

Darkness covered everything,

Blacker than a hundred midnights

Down in a cypress swamp.

Then God smiled,

And the light broke,

And the darkness rolled up on one side,

And the light stood shining on the other,

And God said: That's good!

Then God reached out and took the light in his hands,

And God rolled the light around in his hands

Until he made the sun;

And he set that sun a-blazing in the heavens.

And the light that was left from making the sun

God gathered it up in a shining ball

And flung it against the darkness,

Spangling the night with the moon and stars.

Then down between

The darkness and the light

He hurled the world;

And God said: That's good!

Then God himself stepped down—

And the sun was on his right hand,

And the moon was on his left;

The stars were clustered about his head,

And the earth was under his feet.

And God walked, and where he trod

His footsteps hollowed the valleys out

And bulged the mountains up.

Then he stopped and looked and saw

That the earth was hot and barren.

So God stepped over to the edge of the world

And he spat out the seven seas--

He batted his eyes, and the lightnings flashed--

He clapped his hands, and the thunders rolled--

And the waters above the earth came down,

The cooling waters came down.

Then the green grass sprouted,

And the little red flowers blossomed,

The pine tree pointed his finger to the sky,

And the oak spread out his arms,

The lakes cuddled down in the hollows of the ground,

And the rivers ran down to the sea;

And God smiled again,

And the rainbow appeared,

And curled itself around his shoulder.

Then God raised his arm and he waved his hand

Over the sea and over the land,

And he said: Bring forth! Bring forth!

And quicker than God could drop his hand,

Fishes and fowls

And beasts and birds

Swam the rivers and the seas,

Roamed the forests and the woods,

And split the air with their wings.

And God said: That's good!

Then God walked around,

And God looked around

On all that he had made.

He looked at his sun,

And he looked at his moon,

And he looked at his little stars;

He looked on his world

With all its living things,

And God said: I'm lonely still.

Then God sat down--

On the side of a hill where he could think;

By a deep, wide river he sat down;

With his head in his hands,

God thought and thought,

Till he thought: I'll make me a man!

Up from the bed of the river

God scooped the clay;

And by the bank of the river

He kneeled him down;

And there the great God Almighty

Who lit the sun and fixed it in the sky,

Who flung the stars to the most far corner of the night,

Who rounded the earth in the middle of his hand;

This great God,

Like a mammy bending over her baby,

Kneeled down in the dust

Toiling over a lump of clay

Till he shaped it in is his own image;

Then into it he blew the breath of life,

And man became a living soul.

Amen. Amen.