Reaching for the Seventh Day
Genesis. January. These and good intentions wrapped up as resolutions seemed like the package deal. Only this year I knew the ground had shifted under my feet. This year was primordially different before I could articulate it, which left me feeling like a toddler gesturing with growing frustration. And it was at this moment, as I sat in a church service in the temple in The Hague, that I knew I needed to understand the seven days better.
I'd taken part in countless temple services centred on the Creation over the years. And I had read or interacted with the story in several iterations since I was small. Roles, tasks, functions. But that day, I had a vague sense that I did not truly understand it. I had not actually taken it off the shelf, examined it, and shaken it to see if it swirled like a snow globe.
When you shake something, it has the tendency to settle naturally into a form you can only assume was the plan all along.
What fell out in my lap was the world, from beginning to end, in microcosm. I watched each day melt like a snowflake in my hand. The beginning, a quick dawn, a new start. The end reaching into a settled rest and stillness, calm, renewal.
On a larger scale, one civilisation follows the next as new and predictably as Spring after the Winter. It’s like clockwork, really, how we rise, we fall, and we walk the same worn path as our ancestors before us as we kid ourselves that, only this time, are we truly alive.
And ever, the dividing of the waters, that baptism and expulsion in one breath, the living and the harvest caught in a swoop of the scythe. Life is just magnificently a teeming ball of individual creation timelines, great and small, fast and slow, orbiting the sun.
When my sky was occluded with heavy things, I needed to put my feet back on the forest path and my hands into the dust of the earth.
So I started working with the elements of creation - days - to organise my own way of seeing. It felt comfortable at first, a familiar jacket. But then I recognised the confinement of it and could not take it off. I knew if I chose seven days of creation, I was choosing to announce a carried faith I felt more than I could put into words.
But once I started, I realised the frame was bigger than my personal faith. It was enough to hang a universe on.
Seven days then, and here is the beginning of my offering.
Day I First Light
Roe deer in a corridor of dark pine between the Witven and Kamerven, Stiphoutse Bossen, spring. The light divides the frame before it shows you anything.
Day II Between Waters
Arthur's Seat under a flat grey sky, Edinburgh, autumn. Land and sky pressed together with a seam between them.
Day III Rooted
Ancient oak in spring growth, Glendalough, Ireland. Dry land, gathered water, and everything that grows from it.
Day IV By Measure
Lauwersmeer at last light during the Lyrid meteor shower, Friesland. The hour after the sun, which is how we learned to count.
Day V Wings & Fins
Luna moth on dark wood, Vlindertuin Gemert, summer. Named for the moon, resting in the day of wings.
Day VI In Presence
Bronze bust against a terracotta wall, Prague, early summer. A made man with his eyes still closed.
Day VII In Stillness
Iron doorknob worn to a sunburst, Leuven, spring. Symmetry, a threshold, and hands that are no longer here.
As soon as our lungs expand like bellows with our first breath, we begin to realise that this orb we travel on is going to let us down. Chronically. I remember the birth of my youngest daughter. She entered life with wide open eyes of shock, began to register her disappointment, and kicked the doctor. Reflexes told her to clench her fists and shake with newborn rage.
So, as a mother knows how, I wrapped her. I held her close. And I played the music I’d listened to so often while she was in the womb. Her tiny body registered the familiarity, and she hushed in my arms.
We are not so much mortals reaching for the divine. Otherwise, we’d eventually have our fill in the sixth day, before completion. But rather, we are divine beings having mortal experiences. We are the sojourners here, and we look for the day when we arrive, no more a stranger nor a guest, but like a child at home.S
