A Scientist’s Creation Story
Physicist and theologian Willem Drees begins his book Creation: From Nothing Until Now (London: Routledge, 2002) with this poetic description of the creation of the world. (Note: while I have included the entire poem below, I have not reproduced the exact formatting.)
Drees is a European Christian theologian and his poem is a creation narrative or cosmogony written in the terms of science at the turn of the millennium. Do you think Drees’ poetic account reaches his audience as Genesis 1 reached the ancient Israelites?
There was a time
when there was no time,
when time was not yet.
The time
when there was no time
is a horizon of not knowing
a mist where our questions fade
and no echo returns.
Then,
in the beginning,
perhaps not the beginning,
in the first fraction of a second,
perhaps not the first fraction
of the first second,
our universe began
without us.
After the beginning,
perhaps not the beginning,
after the first fraction of a second,
perhaps not the first fraction
of the first second,
after our universe began,
still without us,
then
the universe was
like seething water
without land and without air,
like a fire
without wood and without cold.
The universe,
as small as it was,
created itself space, matter,
and the cool of the day.
ln billions of galaxies
the universe made itself
from dust stars
from stars dust.
Much later,
from dust from stars
from dust
from stars from dust
swirled our Sun
and from leftovers
the Earth, our home.
Thus,
after ten billion years,
there was evening
and there was morning:
the first day.
Life
a modest beginning,
undirected,
a history of failing
and occasionally
a small success.
A molecule
carried information
from generation to generation,
history bred purpose,
by chance.
Poison
became a gift,
oxygen
a protective robe.
Billions of years later
cells merge,
sex and aging,
death and deception.
A rare
slow lungfish
slithered through the grass;
thus came amphibians to pass.
Successful life
a disaster,
gone
another tide.
Yesterday
a few million years ago
the East Side Story:
groups of apes groom,
hunt and call.
Sticks, stones, fire
eating from the tree of knowledge
the tree of good and evil,
power, freedom,
responsibility:
Beasts became us
more was delivered than ordered,
more than we can bear?
Religion
cement of the tribe
response to power
of mountains,
the storm, the sea,
birth and death,
power as large as gods.
Yesterday
ten thousand years ago
Abel was killed by his brother,
we farmers eat ashamed our bread,
the earth cries, forever red?
A new age,
a prophet wars
king and people,
a carpenter tells
‘a man
who fell among robbers,
was cared for
by an enemy’.
Look,
measure
and count,
challenge knowledge
and authority!
Enlightenment
way out of immaturity.
In us
our heritage,
matter,
information,
and a box
full of stories.
Between
hope and fear
our neighbours
life
here on Earth,
between hope and fear
the great project
of thought and compassion
on a road
of freedom.
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