Is there anything of which one can say,
“Look! This is something new”?
一 King Solomon, “Ecclesiastes 1:10”
The stacking of coffee cups seems to be a specialty of mine; not that it serves any worthwhile purpose. The stacking of anything, actually. Blocks, pencils, staplers, erasers, glasses, or power tools—sometimes plugged in and running. Why is not easy to say. Lately, however, I have resorted to coffee cups and responsibilities.
The stacking of things, destined to fall and often break, does in some ways satisfy me. I like to know I am capable of building a delicate balance. I like to know if the balance was broken, it was something other than my own intention. Call it art. For that matter, call me an artist.
But when the towers tumble, when the fragile constructions crash to their predestined state, like any artist, I am furious. There is a God in heaven, and that god likes an order of his own. People who intend to break the order by defying gravity and the natural laws are doomed to watch their beautiful designs scattered in an order that represents randomness.
My only hope is that this is a challenge. A challenge to build a Tower of Babble that this vindictive god approves of. But no artist, on canvas, in stone, on paper, or in life wants to believe that the creation of his effort is simply the whim of some other force. So, the challenge must be that the artist will build a dream that God himself did not imagine. That, in some way, affects fate rather than having fate affect it.
Ecclesiastes says there is nothing new under the sun. If that was true, then life would not move forward. Forward to what end is what the artist finds himself charged with directing. There are new things under the sun. When higher forces see fit, they destroy the new things. The dedicated artist commands himself to defy this casual collapse of goals, and build taller towers.
I will never reach the sun with coffee cups. They simply don’t make enough. But there are other things, most you cannot see, that stack high, form a delicate balance, and will someday touch the fabric of life woven above us. Thomas Edison, Alexander Bell, and Henry Ford built towers. So do all of us. But only a handful keep building when the forces of nature and theology scatter our toys.
M. T.