Dreamland

But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” [Genesis 3:4-5].

Foreword

In late January 2020, as the pandemic was beginning to raise its ugly head, our weekly Carolina Arbors Bible Study faced an existential problem. Governmental edicts and common sense had combined to bar our in-person gatherings. During the previous four years, some 25 or more of us had joined our heads and our hearts on Wednesdays. We had laughed together and cried together, prayed together, and pored over sacred scripture together. In a word, we had become a congregation—an ecclesia—of sorts. And then, almost overnight, COVID-19 robbed us not only of our respective Sunday worship time, but it also vetoed our special, mid-week gatherings as well. What could we do?

Well, eventually we cobbled together a Zoom scenario that we still utilize each Wednesday, even after all COVID-19 quarantines have been lifted. But three years ago, not knowing how long we’d all be sidelined, I determined that in the meantime, I’d prepare a weekly electronic meditation, based upon one or more of the readings assigned by the Revised Common Lectionary.

I dusted off a web domain—www.riversidegathering.org—that Blair had set up for me 20 years ago. We freshened it up a bit. And then, almost exactly three years ago tonight—i.e., on Ash Wednesday, February 26, 2020, I posted my first Wednesday meditation. Initially, I sent it only to the 25 or so Bible Study members, plus about 10 or 12 friends at Trinity Avenue Presbyterian Church. With the passage of time, the audience has grown to more than 300.

These weekly meditations have become an important part of my spirituality routine. Over the last 156 weeks, I have missed just two Wednesdays. To commemorate the third anniversary of these weekly meditations, I’ve decided to republish that first piece from Ash Wednesday 2020. Because the Lectionary is a three-year cycle, the reading for that First Sunday in Lent is repeated for 2023.

One more thing: So far, this is my shortest meditation.

The Meditation

The Old Testament reading (Revised Common Lectionary) for the First Sunday in Lent is the familiar passage from Genesis [2:15-17; 3:1-7] that describes the irrevocable encounter in the garden of Eden between Eve and the serpent, and its aftermath. Occasionally—why does this seem to occur only during Lent?—as I have supinely lay in bed, waiting for sleep to overcome me, my thoughts have turned generally toward the Genesis passage, yet more specifically to Eve. Did she not also have her own “Lenten” moments, particularly when she rested her head on one of the pillows that she and Adam had fashioned after “their Fall”? Had not sleep always easily come before their fateful bite?

As she lay there in the quiet of the late evening, did she think to herself that things had mostly worked out for the couple after that earth-shattering day? Through hard work they had, after all, made the best of a bad situation. They’d settled into their routines, raised the children, and grown older together? All in all, there was a lot of good upon which to look back.

There were, of course, the tragedies; everyone has them. She could remember the horror and coldness she’d felt when Adam had to break the news to her that one of their beloved sons had killed the other. A murderous son—how terrible that blow had been. Had he inherited his temper from his father?

Where was Cain now? She remembered him as a little boy, how he had come home one evening with ashes on his forehead, apparently after playing near an old fire pit. Now, of course, he bore an indelible mark that identified him to others as a killer [Genesis 4:15].

As she lay in her bed, listening to the heavy breathing of her husband, she knew in her heart that Abel’s murder had its origins in the presumptuous decision that she and Adam had made to do the one thing that Yahweh had told them they could not. They’d searched for knowledge and awareness and had found it. Oh, to undo that day ….

As she lay there in her thoughts, did she assess their life together, now after all the children had grown and left home? Did she lament how it seemed in recent years that Adam had developed a hair-trigger? As she deepened her contemplation, did she admit to herself that sometimes—not always—but sometimes, she’d been that trigger? A few days earlier, when they had argued so bitterly, was it really necessary to remind him that If he’d been a better provider, they wouldn’t have had to struggle as they had for so many years?

As she reposed in those last few moments before she drifted off, when her internal “to-do” list, like the candle beside her bed, was extinguished, when her guard was finally truly down, did she remember any of their “old” world? Could she recall a day and a time when each day and each moment had been spent in love and communion, both with each other and, even more importantly, with “their” Yahweh? Did she then sift over into her special dreamland, where all her faint recollections mingled, and yearned, and cried out for a home she could no longer name?