Track 01 -- Genesis 1:1-2:3       From a human perspective the creation of the heavens and the earth in six days would have been a cataclysmic, a titanic, event. The trouble is there was no place for a human observer to stand, but then neither was there any human being present to observe the event. I had been experimenting with minimalist music since viewing a television documentary about Philip Glass' Einstein on the Beach. So it seemed to me that from God's perspective, and that of the Biblical text, the creation of the heavens and the earth was a fairly straight forward, matter-of-fact, minimalist event.
      The minimalist musical construction builds with the growing complexity and diversity of creation, until that moment when all of nature less man has been created. Then the heavens and the earth really begin to swing. The swinging music crashes to a halt with the advent of man. When man is created, male and female, in the image of God the music returns to the mysterious and ineffable accompaniment for the creation of light. Then the music begins to deconstruct until God rests on the seventh day.
      It was not my intent to be misanthropic here, though I came of age in a very misanthropic time. My point owes more to a new theological insight that came to me as I worked on the music. You can't read the first chapter of Genesis and walk away with sufficient knowledge to create the heavens and the earth. You can walk away, however, with some intellectual tools for deciphering the Bible. There are at least four facts about, definitions, if you will, of the word of God: 1) God's word is true, i.e., He does what he says and makes it so; 2) God's word is powerful, i.e., He speaks and it happens as He said; 3) God's word is authoritative, i.e., He speaks and He is obeyed; and 4) God's word is gracious, i.e., He bestows gifts on whomever He chooses. Here, then, are the initial conditions of the cosmos, the divine symmetry, if you will. The heavens and the earth groove and swing. The creation of man introduces a new element that breaks that symmetry. A creature is created, a whole species of creatures, with a mysterious God-given power to disobey the word of God.

Track 02 -- Interlude I       This is certainly tongue-in-cheek. If you consider the events that transpire in the Bible between Genesis 1 and the giving of the law at Mount Sinai in Exodus 20, this music has nothing to do with any of them. It is not music from a human perspective nor a divine perspective. It is as if we are bored patrons at the bar waiting for a table in the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, just killing time until the next notable iteration of the Word of God, the Ten Commandments.     - free sample -

Track 03 -- Exodus 20       Different people at various times in my life have accused me of being intelligent. And though my ego preens itself on talk like that, I have worked diligently to prove them wrong. By my actions I have demonstrated that I am completely innocent of that charge. Here is a case in point:
      Until my late twenties I believed the Bible was full of hyperbole, a collection of outlandish, even outrageous, figures of speech. If you had asked me then what the word of God was, I would have answered the Ten Commandments, and in a general sort of way the whole rest of the Bible, maybe. But the Ten Commandments was the hard, real, practical thing. Everything else was exaggeration and much ado about virtually nothing.
      It was the Apostle Paul in his letter to the Roman Christians who confronted me, much like the Alabama judge confronted Vinny in the film My Cousin Vinny for coming before him a second time without proper "lawyerly" attire. And my initial response was not unlike Vinny's, "You were serious about that?" But Paul was persistent and my anti-Bible defenses began to crumble. "Well, if you're serious about that," I complained in my mind to Paul, "then what about all that goofy stuff Jesus says? The Prophets? You can't expect me to take that nonsense David says in the Psalms for real?"
      The music (perhaps sound design is a better term) for the accompaniment to the twentieth chapter of Exodus is not from God's perspective, nor from that of the ancient Israelites, necessarily, but from my encounter with Paul: "[N]o one is declared righteous before [God] by the works of the law, for through the law comes the knowledge of sin," Paul wrote the Romans (Romans 3:20 NET). "Now the law came in so that the transgression may increase... (Romans 5:20 NET)" Huh?
      "Is the law sin? Absolutely not! Certainly, I would not have known sin except through the law. For indeed I would not have known what it means to desire something belonging to someone else if the law had not said, “Do not covet.” But sin, seizing the opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of wrong desires. For apart from the law, sin is dead. And I was once alive apart from the law, but with the coming of the commandment sin became alive and I died. So I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life brought death! For sin, seizing the opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it I died" (Romans 7:7-11 NET).
      If the creation of man broke the symmetry of the divine order, the Word of God known as the law brought a truly strange new element into creation.

Track 04 -- Jeremiah 16:19-17:18       Man did not keep God's law, the Word of God through the prophet Jeremiah proclaims. Our sins now bear the burden of specific charges according to specific laws and earn specific punishments for specific lawbreakers. God is offended and angry. He demands justice. Any remedy for this situation is but a vague and distant, a frail and feeble, hope.
      The musical imagry is that of a distant caravan in shimmering waves of heat. Naked slaves trudge wearily in lockstep across a barren wasteland. Even the clothed righteous share the heat and misery of the slow march to an unknown end.

Track 05 -- Isaiah 40       The Word of God through the prophet Isaiah was not that different from that of Jeremiah for the first thirty-nine chapters. Then in chapter forty there is a major change of tone. The message is so different many Bible critics find it difficult to believe it is the same messenger.
      The music is based on an unfinished choral piece with text from the first chapter of the Gospel of John:
          In the beginning was the word
          and the word was with God,
          and the word was God in the beginning,
          in the beginning with God.

Track 06 -- Incarnation       Here is a moment to muse on a mystery. There is no way to understand this mystery except by analogy. The word of God through Isaiah was that men are like grasshoppers. So if we can imagine a man who cared enough for grasshoppers that he volunteered to become one, not as a matter of bad karma, but willingly, we have taken the first step to understanding the mystery of the incarnation--the Word of God made human flesh.

Track 07 -- John 1:1-39       As I already mentioned I am innocent of the charge of intelligence. Here is another case in point: My old music teacher set the opening passages of the Gospel of John to music. As a child I loved the beautiful language set off by his plaintive musical invention. I sang it with passion as a teenager, but even as a young adult I had no clue that these majestic words had anything to do with Jesus, the subject of the rest of John's Gospel. I have no excuse. I don't know how I missed that for so long, growing up in an evangelical church.
      The musical accompaniment reprises the opening theme from Genesis 1 and then quickly turns to a reprise of the Isaiah 40 accompaniment.

Track 08 -- Should I Seek Jesus?       This is accompaniment for Nicodemus, wondering, questioning within himself, whether or not he should risk seeking Jesus.     - free sample -

Track 09 -- John 3       Jesus, the living Word of God made flesh, answers Nicodemus' questions. Note the relatively abstract return of the "In the Beginning.." theme from the accompaniment to Isaiah 40 and John 1:1-39 when John the Baptist speaks of his joy.

Track 10 -- Interlude II       We return now to the clutter and clatter of the world we inhabit everyday.

Track 11 -- 1 Peter 1       This is the Word of God through the Apostle Peter to those who have believed Jesus, the Word of God made flesh.
      The music is from the hymn Like a River Glorious (is God's Perfect Peace). Perhaps the most relevant portion is the chorus:
          Staid upon Jehovah
          hearts are fully blest,
          finding, as he promised,
          perfect peace and rest.
There is some irony as the hymn morphs into a martial theme that competes with, more than complements, Peter's writing. Perhaps I intended to fortify myself to take what was heard in solitude and carry it back with me into my everyday life. I surely have the desire to see this last perspective on the Word of God as a final, triumphant and joyful summation. But there is also a touch of vainglory in it.
      Given my predilection for doubting the sincerity of religious writers, I can always wonder if the hymn writer meant what she said at all. Or if she meant it, how did she mean it? Does she hope for a perfect peace she has not yet seen? Or does she claim to possess this perfect peace? Do I hope for this peace and trust that it will come to me when I sing this hymn with all my heart? Or is it a hypothesis that can falsify my faith if I admit my external and internal questions and conflicts, or acknowledge my restlessness? Oh, I hear you, Peter, I should not be trusting my faith, or even my faithfulness, but the faithfulness of the One who spoke, "Let there be light" and there was light. But now you are pressing on the painful puffy core of my problem. I see these different perspectives on the Word of God as discrete historical moments from different social contexts, even different religions. I am like a flatlander, constrained within a two-dimensional reality, who encounters his first three dimensional object.
      Imagine, if you will, that you exist in only two dimensions and an orange passes before you. At first, you glimpse only a point, then a line that grows in length. If you look closely, the ends of the line, though they trend outward from the center, oscillate rapidly and apparently randomly in and out. Then at some arbitrary maximum length the line begins to contract again. The ends still oscillate rapidly, but the trend is clear until the line diminshes again to a point, and then vanishes from view. No matter how accurately you describe the history of this changing phenomenon, you fail completely to grasp the orange as a unified whole. Now, if you could be lifted above your two dimensional world and get a glimpse of the changing phenomena of the orange as a series of growing and then shrinking circles with rather bumpy edges (sort of like a CAT scan), and if you were very clever, you might be able to assemble those disparate phenomena into some imaginary whole. But alas, you are a two dimensional creature. Even if you are miraculously lifted above and outside your two dimensional world, you are incapable of perceiving a three dimensional object directly.
      All the perspectives of the Word of God, those we have considered, and the others in the Bible we have not considered, are describing a spiritual being, the Word of God. These different perspectives should form a unified whole in our minds. But our fleshly minds, much like the two-dimensional flatlanders, haven't the vision to see this changing spiritual phenomena as a unified whole. We walk by faith, not by sight.