A Play-Doh Creation Story

Today, while sitting in my room, I started thinking about God's process of creation. I thought of the Genesis story in which we read how God carefully crafted the shape of man. I thought of the poetry of James Weldon Johnson in which God, who was lonely, stepped down into the miry clay of a world as dark as a cypress swamp, drew forth a handful of the earth, and shaped it into the form of a man.

In my room I have a case of Play-Doh. It comes on a variety of colors, from red to white to brown. As I sat pondering God's creation of earth and humanity, I pulled the brown Play-Doh from the case and tried to form the shape of a man. I began with his chest, using my thumb and forefinger to shape muscles and a stomach. I rolled a piece into an arm, and then another arm, and then two legs. I used my fingernail to form fingers on the hands. I formed what I thought were pretty good looking feet.

Satisfied with the shape and look of the body I proceeded to work on the head. It was much harder than I thought it would be. After trying for several minutes to form a space for the nose, I finally succeeded. I laughed to myself at the ease of creating a space for eyes and a mouth. I even managed to give my little man a shapely forehead.

Even at this stage of my creation I realized my human was incomplete. I had formed only the external parts. He had no bones, no heart, no kidneys, and no lungs. My human could not breathe and he could not feel. My human had no soul. I felt a wave of disconcerting sorrow at his incompleteness. Yet in a moment I let the feeling go and moved on.

Having formed his head I decided to try to give him sight. Using the white Play-Doh with a little brown and a little black, I formed two eyes. It took several minutes to properly place them on the face, but finally there they were. I felt proud and accomplished; my man could see. But admittedly the eyes were far too large; they stared back at me freakishly. Again, I elected to ignore it.