Susannah - Siusaidh - Susie

"And the day came when the risk it took to remain closed in a bud became more painful than the risk it took to blossom." Anais Nin

I thank warrior_priest for this homespun piece of relaxed coolness. As he points out in his own blog, the internet becomes like a global coffee bar where any of us can drop in to enjoy people being creative in a sort of non-corporate home-produced way. All round the world it kicks off, and there is so much talent just breaking out. Oh yes, and the singer is attractive and intelligent too ;)



Nataly and Jack are Pamplamoose

Okay, I just love these little YouTube clips on Simon's Cat...





The second one made me laugh out loud when the cat was swaying with the heavy plant pot :)

If you would follow me, don't look among the dead.

I am alive, and I live in the least of those you meet.

Proclaim my love. Find me.

The question asked:

“For those of you who believe in theistic evolution, how do you reconcile this with the story of Adam and Eve and Christ's redemption of humanity's sins? Do you believe in the literal account of the fall of humanity as presented in Genesis or have you come to another conclusion?”

And my response:

There are a whole load of issues here.

1. Truth really matters and the prevailing evidence of science strongly suggests that for hundreds of millions of years before the human species, animals were living and dying and becoming fossilised in residues, including dinosaurs. Therefore the claim that the world was perfect at the time of Adam and Eve and that death had not entered the world is in itself contradictory with the conclusions and evidence of those truth-seeking scientists.

2. It is reasonable to assume that Adam and Eve did not exist as the first humans, and cannot be remembered as such, and that humans always had parents, and evolved from their ancestors. Therefore, assuming that truth takes account of reason, the usage of 'Adam and Eve' in the bible is most likely to be accounted for either (i) by ignorance of humanity's biological origins (which is fair enough, given the limits of scientific knowledge in those days), or (ii) by calling the Adam and Eve story "symbolism" and seeing it as myth designed to convey spiritual truth rather than historical or biological truth.

3. I believe that viewing the "Adam and Eve" story as symbolism rather than literal truth has the advantage that it helps us concentrate on the spiritual motives and messages of these passages. And indeed, there are profound insights to be gained from reading this story as symbolism - not least ideas of ourselves being made in the divine image etc. So therefore, regardless of the probability that Adam and Eve didn't exist, a different kind of truth may still be conveyed.

4. There are problems with supposing that this story is just symbolic though. For a start, it subverts the idea that the bible is always right. If Adam and Eve is symbolic, then who is to say whether other contra-scientific events in the bible are symbolic or mythical too? The passover, the parting of the Red Sea, The Flood, or even the resurrection? Where does it all end? Therefore there is strong motivation for people to want to "defend" the bible by believing in the Adam and Eve story as historic fact, even in the face of scientific evidence and probable fact to the contrary.

5. In addition, if the Fall did not really happen as recorded, and is just a symbolic way of talking about humanity, then all the references to it in the bible, and to death coming because of Adam's sin, and (later) the concept of Original Sin... are founded on something that is not fact but simply a useful myth. In addition, when Paul justifies the subordination of women in certain contexts, on the grounds that "Eve sinned first"... his justification for subordination is rooted on a myth and Eve didn't sin first if she didn't exist or if the rest of the context of Eve is mythical and contrary to scientific truth. In short, if you take Adam and Eve as myth, it has repercussions not just for the Genesis passages but also for very significant claims elsewhere in the bible.

6. In early literature, were writers as literalistic and insistently factual as we are today? Around a campfire, many myths and legends might be told - but in the way they were told and heard, it's more likely the people were receiving these stories at a deeper, semi-trance like, dreaming, subconscious level... to access imaginative truth that is missed if it's all just fact and factually perceived. Maybe 'Adam and Eve' were originally part of folk myth like this, and the very modern fundamentalist impulse to collapse myth into history, and demand fact where fact is maybe not the most useful thing... well it's maybe part of modernity that demands literalism. It may be the wrong way of 'doing' the bible.

7. The other possibility is that the original authors of Genesis (I say authors in the plural because most modern scholarship sees the pentateuch as a literature that evolved and was edited by religious communities probably over centuries) simply were mistaken and wrong: they genuinely believed Eden was historic fact, and nothing had died before, and Adam had no parents, but were mistaken because they were writing in their own historical context, and had limited scientific knowledge, and were fallible human beings like you or me (surely true). In which case, these episodes become strong indicators of how we are supposed to read and understand and apply the bible - not as literal truth, not even as inerrant truth, but as profound but fallible searchings after truth: sincere articulations, from within their own contexts, assumptions, social values, knowledge (and its limits) etc.

So personally I view "Adam and Eve" as mythical expression which tells us more as myth than it can tell us as fact. Additionally, I believe it calls into question some assumptions about the bible and its inerrancy, while in no way diminishing the potential for finding spiritual truth if we respond through the heart. In a sense "not knowing" is compatible with the nature of the divine and holy - so much of whom is unknowable, and mysterious. And "not knowing" involves humility and surrender of control.

The tense mental and intellectual obsession with the bible as fact may be very modern, and a reaction to loss of power and authority and control as science has encroached on areas of knowledge the bible claimed to own for itself, and areas of morality and justice that were once claimed to belong solely to christians, and a secular reality that has earned trust and credibility in various disciplines. Modern fundamentalism is very modern indeed I think. And in its factual defence of a mythical idyllic Eden and a perfect infallible text, it is possibly actually missing some of the way spiritual insight is best communicated: which may indeed be by myths around the campfire, and openness to dreaming and story and the subconscious. Not just this hard facts - facts - facts (or, actually, more usually, selected facts on isolated issues chosen as modern battlegrounds) which modern christians sometimes demand as fact when actually it may be contextual and provisional.

I'll conclude with my position: I do not believe that Adam and Eve existed as first humans; I do not believe death only came into the world because of their sin; I do not believe that humans had no ancestors; I don't even believe in the Noah's Ark story and the Flood over the world... and yet... I believe that these myths and stories communicate profound wisdom, great beauty, and open our hearts if we receive the stories at a deep enough level in our hearts.

Many christians would share my final paragraph. I believe it is an older truer way of understanding the bible, and that literalism and the fundamentalist instinct is a reaction to loss of influence, and a very modern phenomenon in its present expressions, attempting to reclaim authority by insisting myth is fact when, perhaps, myth was always intended to be received as myth - and understanding gained through story-telling and opening up to imagination and mystery of love.

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

T.S. Eliot

That's how I think it is, and how we come home to ourselves, and come home to Godde.

But then, I believe - in eternity - we have always been home with Godde, and our end is only our return

But in more temporal terms, I believe that many of us spend a lifetime yearning for lost innocence and childhood...

For the time and the place (but more than that, the identity) before exile, before alienation from ourselves, before damage and hurt had done their work

And to reclaim once again the whole and best and the loveliest of who we are.

Our summer here in south east UK was dreary and rain-splashed, but autumn this year has been... beautiful.

I can't remember a more placid September and October, with almost no rain and such gentle breezes.

As a result, the leaves have remained on the trees, and turned all shades of yellows and oranges and reds.

And as they have fallen, they have been dry and brittle, so you walk through them with a 'shush' and 'shush' and 'shush'.

I have worn a coat a couple of times, but here we are, almost at All Saints and Samhain, and the bonfires are dry and ready for lighting.

And then the evenings draw in towards deep winter night.

Bex and Peter came round for a games evening - we all had a lovely time: four hours of games, pizza, snacks, cheesecake, smoothies, and Bex made the best hot chocolate and cream ever.

I admit I found it quite hard holding back my sweet feminine release... sometimes in the evening I just let go, but I worried it would distress them, especially my son... so I compromised a lot of the time. But I was dressed really pretty, and they were both awesome about it, and we were just there, person to person because we love one another.

I love them and I hold them in my prayers as I go to sleep. Hannah is away at uni, of course, but possibly coming back next week for a reading week.

So today was a nice day. I felt pretty and really released in town today as well. And I seemed to pass with so many people today, with men calling me 'darling' and 'love' (which while patronising does still feel quite good for my confidence, that they are not realising I am transsexual).

But most of all, I felt good in town today, because you see my biggest issue right now is that *I* am being my own gatekeeper, and *still* the old defensive holding back kicks in, from all those years of hiding, but today I was just letting go a lot, and letting myself feel as sweet and feminine and femme as I am, and... well... it just felt happy.

I was once (a long time ago) going out with this fun and lively woman. I was a prison governor at the time, she was a midwife. We were both unattached and we really enjoyed going out places. The relationship seemed to be going really well.

Then one day she started spouting this outrageous racist shit, quite casually, as if it was the most obvious truth in the universe. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I said, "Are you serious about what you are saying?" and she said of course she was. I told her I just couldn't agree with that shit at all, and she was like, chill out, we're great for each other etc.

That was the last day I ever went out with her.

Project terminated.

Susannah has just got up, washed, had breakfast, got ready for early morning church, not realising that the clocks have gone back and it was 6 o'clock not 7 o'clock. Thank goodness I glanced at the computer clock before going out of the door, but DOH!