Prodigy

Artists, composers, architects, inventors and all manner of designers face a challenge that is particularly difficult for the majority of the population: creation. Clearly there are many levels of skill when it comes to new creations. We know of Mozart, DaVinci and Edison. Men who possessed significant capacity to create new things that we can look at and say to ourselves, That's quite a thing. Others are a bit less skilled in their ability to create, producing compositions that are less than beautiful, or inventions that simply don't work. The key to separating the wheat from the chaff lies in the imagination.

Imagination is the key to creation. When someone is creating something new, they are bringing into existence something that didn't exist before. That's true whether a child is building a sand castle or a nuclear physicist is building a new detector for exotic atomic particles. The guiding force during the process of creation is the imagination of the creator, of the designer.

When we imagine, we are creating. In our mind's eye, something new has come into existence. If we are sufficiently talented, we can translate that mental concept into a physical reality. The more completely we can imagine the final result, the more perfect that result will be. I'm quite sure that Mozart could imagine his symphonies in a single thought, with every note and every instrument tied together into a coherent whole. It was not a series of notes to him, but rather a single creation. The fact that it had so many bits and pieces was purely coincidental.

Imagination is required to create, but what is required to critique? Little more than the ability to perceive. If I can see a painting, I can decide whether or not I like it. That's it. There is a certain creative artistry to communicating that perception to others, of course. That is what anyone who authors a written or oral piece must have. The greater the skill, the more coherent the presentation. Yet a critic is not a creator by nature.

I am reminded of a favorite quote of mine of Theodore Roosevelt.

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."

Creation is a dramatic thing, as Theodore Roosevelt understood. It is the task of making something that was never there before. That includes changes such as democracy. The founding fathers had a mental image of how a nation could be ruled to produce the greatest good. This is why we call such men visionaries. They see something in the future that could be. They sometimes "dare greatly" to bring about that future.

The greatest creators are the ones who form a single thought, a single notion, that comprises the whole of their creation, then bring that creation into being in one act and finally let it stand on its own merits. No finishing touches, no tune ups, no tweaks. It was complete when it was set down the very first time. It's an exremely rare thing, but it does happen. People who can accomplish such things are usually assigned the moniker "prodigy".

Now consider the universe itself. Modern theory of creation declares that the universe originated in one colossally energetic event, the big bang. Once that event took place, a multi-billion year sequence of events was begun, leading to the present day and continuing into the future for an unknown period of time. Billions of years and countless stars spread across distances so vast that we cannot get our heads around them.

If you believe in God and you wish to appreciate how vast God's ability is, look at your hands. See the intricacies of your fingerprints and the dexterous control that you have of so many things about you. Then look up. At night, we are regaled with the stars. If you have a good imagination, picture the stars as they really are; they are suns as large or larger than our own, at indescribable distances. Around those suns are other planets. Some as large as Jupiter, others as small as the Earth. And on those planets, there may well be other beings who are contemplating their own hands and looking up into the night sky. Trillions of suns with how many planets with how many people, being born, living lives, growing old and dying. Cementing their own dreams into action, changing their own future bit by bit, day after day, year after year, since the beginning of time itself.

Science tells us that God created all that in a moment. I wonder what He was thinking.