Ex Nihilo (make something out of nothing)

Ex Nihilo is a Latin phrase meaning 'out of nothing'.

Ex nihilo is a concept that we find in nearly all creation narratives, especially the ones in the ancient Middle East, where creation is formed out of formless matter, chaos*.

Do you remember 'the Nothing' in the film The Neverending Story? The Nothing was destroying the kingdom Fantasia, reducing it to, well, nothing. The way to defeat The Nothing was to call out the name of the childlike empress, and create a new world.

Words, names, give form to chaos. We see this in creation narratives too, especially in Genesis. Creation is spoken into being from nothing, from chaos.

The question then for you and I then is, what are we using our words and lives to do? To call creation out of chaos, life from death, or to destroy, separate, and tear down?

Something to ponder.

Pierre

* "In Sumerian myth this cosmic ocean is personified as the goddess Nammu "who gave birth to heaven and earth" and had existed forever; in the Babylonian creation epic Enuma Elish pre-existent chaos is made up of fresh-water Apsu and salt-water Tiamat, and from Tiamat the god Marduk created Heaven and Earth; in Egyptian creation myths a pre-existent watery chaos personified as the god Nun and associated with darkness, gave birth to the primeval hill (or in some versions a primeval lotus flower, or in others a celestial cow);and in Greek traditions the ultimate origin of the universe, depending on the source, is sometimes Okeanos (a river that circles the Earth), Night, or water. To these can be added the account of the Book of Genesis, which opens with God separating and restraining the waters, not creating the waters themselves out of nothing" Wikipedia