Wayside Pulpit

Eden

I am a theoliterary Christian. I find spiritual meaning in the stories of the bible regardless of their questionable historical validity. However, I’ve never been much of a buyer-in of the Garden of Eden story. I guess I’ve never found anything in the story that has reached and grabbed my spiritual sensibilities.

There are many difficulties I have with the story. The main being that I don’t need a creation myth; science has given me more than enough ideas to chew on when it comes to how the universe began and how humanity populated the world. Also, the traditional Eden interpretation of humanity falling from grace is so imbedded between the lines, I’ve not been able to read the text a different way. Well, at least until yesterday.

In the story God says, “Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.” The day we made the choice to live in a morally compartmentalized world is the day we died. Once society became based on right and wrong we lost the ability to live at center, to live embraced by god. Having to be a right way, compared to a wrong way, is why we are socialized. It is why we are molded to be what society says, rather than to be what we are.

What keeps us from God is all the junk we’ve been fed about how we should be. That junk is what was hung on the tree in the Garden of Eden. That junk is what humanity ate. God knew that once we created a knowledge of right and wrong there was no going back. We would be stuck in the cycle of trying to be a certain way, failing, beating ourselves up for it and then trying again. In this process we never find out who we are. We never find out who god is. Rather, we spin around and around hiding from ourselves and from the divine behind the sewed fig leaves of, “should,” “ought,” “don’t” and “can’t”

We never fell from grace, we fell into social conditioning.

Stagnant

I distract myself from things that I really want to do. If I was avoiding doing things I didn’t want to do, well, it would make more sense. But, these are things that I want to do, but seem to continually find reasons for not doing them.

I turn my attention, instead, to the internet, reading the newspaper, napping, going for walks, cooking elaborate recipes and doing “busy work.” These are tasks that are not moving me in the direction I wish to go, rather they are things, the minutiae that keep me in place. Still, I can’t seem to remove myself from their grasp, their hold on my life is stronger than I would like to admit. This all reminds me of Paul’s writing in Romans, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.”

What is it that runs much of what I do? I’m not exactly sure but I do know that when I start to push against “it,” with ideas of creativity and moving my life beyond the status quo, it pushes back. It makes dreams and desires seem unimportant, while the nap is the best I can do. It takes the fun out of most activities and labels them a waste of time. I sense it will do whatever it can to make sure that I do not carry out my creative ideas or even enjoy the life I am living.

What to do about all of this? I think, as in most things spiritual, the first step is awareness, knowing that this is how I have been conditioned to operate. I’ve been formed by society, by my upbringing and the structures in which I exist, to meet the norm, to stick with the way things “ought” to be, rather than moving toward a new kind of “could.” Seeing this is the first step to moving beyond it. Because it is hard to turn onto the road less traveled when all you see are the old sidewalk cracks beneath your feet.

The second step is walking beyond the conditioning. It is hearing the pleas for the naps, the extended surfing times, the myriad of distractions and simply letting them be. It is giving them no energy, no opposition, but also no agreement.

Paul asks, “Who will rescue me from this body of death?” The answer for him was simply, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” Center to Paul was Christ. Center for me is the breath. Center for some is god. Whatever you call it, it is your divinity that has the ability to transcend the limits that imprison you.

Compassion

Years ago, for a wedding gift, I received a large framed copy of 1 Corinthians 13:4-13. This is the often quoted bible piece about love being patient and kind, not jealous, not boastful. I hung the gift in the bathroom for a number of years, right above the toilet. The colors matched the bathroom, and the bathroom, being a well visited place, was a good location in the house for a good message.

Paul’s writing to Corinth is about compassion; the kind of compassion that exists when awareness is brought to a situation. The love he speaks of is the compassion that is available when conditioning is not ruling the day. It is the compassion that exists when judgment (either good or bad) is not present. It is a tall order to experience this love or to show this love to ourselves, because we are socially conditioned to beat ourselves up, to try to change ourselves, to judge ourselves, to hate ourselves.

Compassion does not rejoice in wrong doing or even right doing, rather it rejoices in the truth. The truth is that compassion is the only thing that will not end, it is the only thing that passes on once our bodies have died. It is what observes the world without judgment. It is our true nature.

When we were children we knew this nature, we acted upon it, we rejoiced in it. Then social conditioning turned us into, “adults.” It helped us to become what society wanted us to become, not who we truly were. Therefore, we put an end to “childish ways,” and lost the magic of living.

Yet, even as adults, we still have within ourselves, burning brightly, the magic of who we truly are. But, like a dream that is hidden upon waking, you can’t quite catch its tail as it rounds a corner in your mind. You see it in a mirror dimly, but the reflection is fuzzy and it seems, well, almost unreal. Yet it is the most real thing that you have. It is the truth of who you are.

I may have prophetic powers. I may be brilliant and knowledgeable about intellectual things. I may lay claim to a faith that can move mountains. Yet, if I have given up my true nature, my compassion, my love, then I am nothing.