Keep and Destroy ...

Tuesday, Feb 28, 2012. I have been sitting in a wonderful Japanese garden this morning for breakfast. It is a beautiful location in the middle of busy Tokyo, where aristocrats used to live, before the house was transformed into a guest house for international visitors.

Beautiful Landscape …

It is interesting what thoughts come up when you sit in a beautiful environment. Thinking about sustainability first you realize that you need times of rest to sustain your own creativity. For me, scientific workshops are such a time of “getting out of the routine”. Here, I have time to think about fundamental questions and problems of my science and my life in general.

But I also had the following thought: if everything would be set up as beautiful and completed as this garden, would the world be finished then? I realized that I cannot imagine a “finished” world. There would be people moving on. There would be those destroying the beauty, just to generate and create new beauties. We cannot stop the world of developments, and creativity is a power which also includes the destruction of what has been there before!

I remember some exercises, we did on a scientific “sand pit” in the UK some years ago. They made us draw images, and then destroy them just to start drawing new ones. That time, most people hesitated to carry out such a destruction. We all put effort into the drawings … why should we destroy them. They had their beauty! But now I understand better that destruction is a necessary part of change.

Faith needs renewal

What is the relationship between creativity and destruction in faith? Or is faith different, is it more sustainable than other parts of life? Is it not clear that God has been the same since the beginning of time?

Yes, the biblical records have been the same for thousands of years. We can trust in God, since he is truly reliable. But also faith needs renewal. Faith needs to be continuously renewed, both the faith of individuals as well as the faith of the church. We do not live in a static environment, but in a highly dynamic world. Faith will always be in sincere interaction with the world, and thus will react and act all the time. Faith needs renewal!

We need to understand that true sustainability needs the continuous balance of keeping things and renewing things. There is no sustainability without the power of destruction and the power of creation. It is said that God's love is new every morning. It is continuously renewed by his creative power. It is continuously generating new ideas how to express itself. It will never stop to evolve and to grow. Everything flows. (Roland Potthast) ... more texts