Why is God’s first creation light?
Before creation, there is chaos and confusion (tohu vavohu), a sense of hovering in darkness over a deep abyss with a faint whisper of divine spirit sweeping across it all, reminding one of the distant possibility of better things.
This description is reminiscent of the internal experience of despair. In addition to a deep sinking pit, despair tends to come with a feeling of darkness and confusion, a chaotic emotional state in which a cascade of many feelings and thoughts comes in rapid fire all at once, overwhelming the system so that you don’t know where to turn first and it seems that the only reasonable alternative is indeed the pit, total shut down, even when you can hear and remember the faint call of the divine spirit as you sink.
Light helps. We talk a lot about compassion, but often in addition to or maybe even before compassion, we need clarity, and clarity’s helpmate, curiosity, to bring non-judgmental light into the dark torrent of confusing emotions, seeing what’s what and beginning to tease them all out (separating, as God does in creation). Curiosity and clarity, with their qualities of light, bring some immediate relief in the simple act of knowing and naming whatever is there. Ah, yes. That’s how it is, comes the sigh. Now I see.
And from a place of clarity one can begin to move forward creatively. Sometimes it feels like despair is the creative impulse gone awry — immobilized by indecision and confusion. Bringing clarity — about what you actually feel (not what you should feel) and also about what it is that you really want, what matters most — unstops the creative flow so that next steps can be taken.
Everything falls into place with clarity at the front; creation proceeds in a natural unfolding order, each step infused with a clarity of purpose. The Hebrew word Vayar, “And He [God] saw,” — repeated at the conclusion of each creation, “And God saw that it was good,” — has the same letters plus one as the word or, light. The light of the first day, the clarity we start the project with, actually permeates all of creation through the continual seeing that it facilitates, the viewing and checking in — is this in line with the tov, the “good,” standard we set at the start?
Light can also serve as a spotlight, a way to focus in only on what really matters; we often get stopped and bogged down by the busyness of distractions and by critical thoughts comparing our work to that of others. A razor sharp clarity about one’s own purpose provides a spotlight that puts all the rest in darkness. This matters; this doesn’t. Perhaps that is what it means to separate light and dark, as God did, to see clearly one’s purpose and let the rest drop.
This light, this clarity that is brought into a world of darkness and confusion, this is the first thing that God declares to be tov, “good.” Indeed, nothing else in creation is explicitly named as good; that first phrase is the only one that includes the object — Vayar Elokim et ha’or ki tov, “And God saw that the light was good” — as opposed to the later phrases which have no object– Vayar Elokim ki tov, And God saw that it —inexplicit “it” — was good.
Light is the ultimate good. To bring light inside, to bring curiosity and clarity into the abyss of confusion and despair, is to allow the light of God’s face in — ya’er Hashem panav elekha, “may the light of God’s face shine upon you” — and to see clearly reflected in that generous pure smiling light what is actually there inside us, to see it and declare it “good,” a part of God’s created world, to see it and to know its truth, our truth, a manifestation of the divine truth implanted in us, and to live from that place, to create from that place, with clarity and determination.
