2 To Be Eve

It was a lovely day, one of the very first since God shouted for light, so I hadn’t many to compare. The sunshine felt warm and inviting on my skin after a long cool night. I looked up and closed my eyes. The heat went from my face into the core of me. With my eyes shut it seemed that light was spreading throughout my body! My man and I had spent all morning gathering berries that grew on bushes near our shelter. They were oh so sweet and delicious! Today we will venture a little farther from home where there are nuts! Mmmmm, nuts! I have a huge round nut that Father-God told me has a pure white chewy center and milky juice, but we can’t open it! We will keep trying.

Adam said that before I was made God told him that he could eat every plant that has seeds and every tree that has fruit with seeds. That is our meat. Oh, the variety of colors and flavors are amazing! Some food is bitter, which I am learning to like, but most of it is quite tasty! We love to eat! I love God too. He comes to visit us every day. Even when I can’t see Him I sense His presence. He is my Father. He is also my Mother.

My man told me that Father instructed him after he was made not eat the fruit from one of the trees, only one, because it was poisonous. I wonder if that is true; maybe Adam misunderstood. Sometimes when I am very hungry and the trees are bare because we have eaten their fruit and I cannot wait for more to grow, I look at that poisonous tree with all of its lush fruit and I want to taste it, just try it. Maybe I will someday. I don’t know what death means anyway, so what harm can it do? Maybe Father is kidding; I know He will always love me, no matter what I do.

Black. I have matured and experienced much since I wrote those words. My man and I still love to eat, but the Father never comes to visit since He sent us away from the garden. Food is harder to come by here. My man must plant the seeds and we wait and wait. Sometimes the ground is so dry that nothing ever happens. I cry a lot.

Once upon a time, many moons ago it rained nonstop for a very long time. Everyone perished in the flood except for a kind man who had met our Father and could hear Him speak. He let me enter the boat Father told him to build that protected his family from the flood. Eventually the water disappeared enough so that we could leave the boat, but for a while it was impossible to plant or to find food. Then the Father told the kind man a very strange thing.

He told him that he could eat moving things that live! Not just the fruit and plants as He told me! Imagine that! Actually killing and eating animals- beings, creatures just like us! But just as He gave my man, Adam, one restriction, He told the kind man not to eat animals with their blood. 

Now the animals are afraid of the men. It is so sad. We had such fun playing together. The world has become so violent. It took me a very long time to get the nerve to eat an animal, but I finally became hungry enough to do that. It was horrible. I cried like a baby.

Yellow. I have some good news today! Our Father created a man, almost as He created my man, but not quite. He called this man His Son which made Adam feel sorry all over again. The new Son came through a woman. I feel a little proud about that. This Son told me that He came to take us back to live with the Father again. What good news! How wonderful it will be when Father visits us again. How I have missed seeing Him.

I want to be ready. I will stop eating animals right now so my body will not be filled with the murder of them, so I can be as I was in the beginning when we were all together and happy before the days of death. I will only eat the fruits and nuts and plants and be oh so grateful and oh so obedient and trusting this time. Thank you Father for letting us come back to live with You. I love you more. 

13 The Sabbatical

“Thus the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, were finished. 2 And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. 3 Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.” Gen 2:1-3

“Eve, are we still in Eden?” I asked. “It’s so quiet.”

“Yes, we are; this is the Sabbath day of rest. God is resting. Poor Jesus after all He went through, He is resting.”

“Eve, will we actually live forever when we eat from the tree of life?” Eve’s eyes were bright and beautiful as she looked at me with wonderment and then replied, “Yes, of course silly. Why do you think we came here? We don’t want to die. We came back to Eden so God could restore my life and yours and the others who are with us on this journey.”

Funny how just now I started to think about the logistics of living forever. “Um, Eve,” I asked, “Won’t it be weird to never die when everyone else does? How will we work when we are four hundred years old? There is such a thing as age discrimination in the workplace you know.”I suppose I wanted to go back to Eden to see paradise and instead I found Jesus Christ suffering on the Cross. This has been a most unexpected outcome.

I added, “If we are in Eden with Jesus, then I hate to tell you this, but He DIED yesterday.”

“My turn,” said Eve with a knowing grin.

Bracing myself for her question, I replied, “Okay, shoot.”

“Does God lie?”

“Of course not! He despises lying. Liars are among the first to go to hell in the judgment.

“When God told me that on the day I would eat the poisonous fruit I would die. Did I? Remember, Adam and I had children after that. So did God lie to me?”

I answered, “Most people read that to mean that you would die eventually and that death came to the whole world, even to animals.”

“Oh don’t be silly. God said nothing about animals dying if I ate the fruit! He said I would die. Let me tell you my friend, I did die on that day. The minute we noticed that we were naked and ashamed it was apparent that we were dead because we were self conscious.  We separated ourselves from God and then He let us drift farther from His will. When my son Cain was jealous because God did not accept His gift of fruit Cain’s focus was on himself and it has gone on that way through the millennia. Dead humans think about themselves, their nakedness, and their passions. Illness, both physical and mental is a type of death because the person can’t help but focus on themselves. That’s why with His dominion over nature, Jesus Christ started His mission by healing left and right; He immediately started restoring life to mankind.”

 “Yes,” I exclaimed, “and He died!!”

“But only for a second!” Eve shot back. "Did you hear Him yesterday when He said, ‘My God my God, why have You forsaken Me?’ That was the moment He separated from God. He focused on Himself in order to go to Hades where all the dead people go so He could unlock the door to give them life too.”

“Eve, if you hadn’t eaten the poison fruit would your body have stayed alive forever?”

Without hesitation Eve replied, “Maybe but why would I want that? Bodies wear out naturally because God made them that way for the same reason that He made the seasons.

When we ate the poison fruit we immediately died the death of being out of God’s will and self conscious and THEN we lost power over nature so we had no control over illness and aging, not even our own. Shedding the body and becoming a free spirit without the burden of the body has been kind of nice too! But it shouldn’t always be called death.

I must say, it was so wonderful to see Jesus with His dominion over nature again, healing and bringing people back from the dead! Ah my heart sang to see that.

We should stop talking now; it is the day of rest. Tomorrow will be a big day in Eden and in Jerusalem!”

The difference between biological death and spiritual death was confusing so I said, “Eve one last question, when we eat from the tree of life will we regain our power over nature so we too can heal people, walk on water, and multiply food?” 

14 Easter/Pascha

Eve and I woke-up simultaneously in utter darkness. I mean we really woke up! I know that all this time Eve said our Lenten journey was to be an awakening rather than a trek through space or even time, but I didn’t quite understand what she meant until today. When a person wakes up from the sleep state (s)he is suddenly in a place that is quite different from wherever the dream took him or her. In the last few days we had seen glimpses of Eden, but today we have finally arrived to stay.

Eden is a beautiful peaceful place because it is where man and God live together on this earth. Of course God doesn’t live full time in Eden, He never did. ‘He art in heaven.’ But when He comes to visit He sees His children, alive and loving, just as He always intended them to be. The pride of this Divine Father is no less than the pride any father feels for his sons and daughters when they look and behave like the best of him, and when they accomplish great things for this world.

Awakening to Eden has been the most astounding experience of my life. I hope to stay here all my earthly days. When my body yields to nature I hope to go to live without my body in the resting place where God’s children wait for the new body and the new earth pictured in the Revelation to Saint John. For now, I want to thank Eve for giving me the idea of going back to Eden and we both want to thank Jesus Christ for paving the way back.

Eve and I had fallen asleep on soft ground by the mouth of the tomb of Joseph of Arimethea where lain the lifeless body of Jesus.  A cool breeze wafted over our faces sending a chill down my spine. It was the day after the Sabbath rest but it seemed to me like the very first day of creation. The world felt fresh as if recently plucked from its roots in bondage.

“Eve look, the stone is still there.” Our eyes were fixed on the closed tomb as if it was the horizon waiting for the brilliant tip of the sun to appear.

All of a sudden a shimmering white light surrounded the boulder revealing what must have been a glorious surge of light inside the tomb, like the light I imagine appeared on the first day when God call light into existence, like the Tabor-light of transfiguration, like the blinding light on Moses’ face after visiting God. In serendipitous unison, Eve and I and the rest of our party slowly whispered, “Praise God” incapable of saying anything else so utterly flabbergasted were we.

By the light of the moon and stars we could see a wind push the boulder away from the mouth of the cave.  We witnessed the figure of the man-of-light walking out of the radiant tomb surrounded by a host of archangels. It was the same body we had seen hanging on the cross, but transfigured again. He was holding a stick and His head was held high like a General proud and victorious after battle, refreshed from a mission well accomplished and with no casualties. But not a man: a god, imagine Zeus, imagine Apollo. The archangels surrounding Him were militant as well; perhaps it was Michael on His left side, perhaps Rafael on His right.  Outside the tomb the entourage was greeted with a host of cherubim cheering and laughing. Such sober merriment eyes had never received.

Jesus Christ spotted Eve and walked right up to us. He looked her straight in the eye and she looked up at Him with great courage and loving admiration. Jesus said to Eve, “Follow Me. I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except through Me.” Unable to sustain the power of His presence, Eve buckled and fell at His feet. I think I felt myself and the rest of us disappear, I’m not sure.  The party of Christ with His servants and friends then turned and walked away fading from our sight, leaving a lone angel to wait in the cave.

Like the Shunemite woman’s son, like Jairus’ daughter, like Lazarus, Jesus returned from death. Unlike Lazarus and the others, Christ brought a gift, the tree of life, to share with the children of God. Like the dove that carried the olive twig back to Noah, Jesus carried a branch from the tree of life to His brothers and sisters. 

Christ returned from exile, the same exile to death that Eve instituted upon mankind.  He endured His Holy expedition through the twirling flames of betrayal, persecution, and crucifixion for one purpose: to show Eve, me and you the way back to life: to immortality where mankind consciously lives with God, in His Will, and according to His likeness.

Welcome to Eden, my reader-friend. Let’s proclaim the good news that death is no longer mandatory. Let’s follow Christ’s footsteps through the flaming swords or tuck ourselves safely inside Him to reach the tree of life that was planted in the middle of Eden at creation.

With tears streaming from our eyes Eve and I hugged each other tight while singing, voicing, proclaiming and saying, “We made it! We made it!”

Then Eve said, “I must go back for Adam. Oh I can’t wait to tell him where we’ve been! Please be here when I get back okay?”

I smiled and said, “I hope to be; go in peace sister. I’ll wait here for the ladies to show up. I can’t wait to see the expressions on their faces.”

Eve winked and left skipping down the path.

The New Day.