Living
Duality
“Eden
is home, but we live far removed from it. And yet, in the Genesis
account, the garden is not destroyed. Rather, Adam and Eve become
fugitives from the place of their deepest identity. It is a picture
of humanity living in exile.”
J.
Philip Newell (Christ of the Celts)
Did
you know that the Tigris and Euphrates rivers flow out of Turkey,
through Iraq and Syria and into the Persian Gulf? This is the part of
the world once called “the fertile crescent,” which scientists,
as well as Biblical scholars, believe to have been the birthplace of
humankind. No wonder we cringe when we see the temples bombed, and
the ancient art destroyed. This area has been holy to us from the
beginning of our existence.
Since
humanity was exiled, we have forgotten that the garden was not
destroyed—it is the place of our original unity with God and with
the earth. We carry the memory of that integrated whole within us,
but it is walled off by the fear created by the knowledge of good and evil. It is this duality that separated us in the first
place, and that continues to keep us from unity with of all creation.
We are “fugitives from the place of our deepest identity.”
I
think it is important to consider that real world events mirror this
archetypal story. The the asylum seekers now inundating Europe are
coming from this area of the Middle East, and the response to their
coming has been dual—welcomed and vilified, embraced and turned
away. That original fear still separates us, and we respond by
building walls to try and contain what we fear.
Let
us remember today that the Garden is still there. We can live in fear, or
we can live in love. Of these two, love is stronger.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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