Men & Women -- Why Are We So Different?

Differences abound between men and women. And all the people said, "Duh!"

Ken Wilbur puts it this way:

Men tend toward hyperindividuality, stressing autonomy, rights, justice, and agency, and women tend toward a more relational awareness, with emphasis on communion, care, responsibility and relationship. Men tend to stress autonomy and fear relationship; women tend to stress relationship and fear autonomy.

A broad brush, but containing much truth nonetheless...

Women's friendships focus more on mutual help and problem-sharing, and much intimacy ... wheras men develop friendships based on common interests, with less intimacy.

More differences:

- Women seem to need less power and status than men ... women's speech is more cooperative,reciprocal and collaborative, and their conversations last longer, filled with feedback, both verbally and non-verbally -- empathy prevails. Disagreement is often in the form of a question, rather than a statement. The goal for women seems to be to develop and maintain intimate, reciprocal relationships.

- Men tend to be more blunt, competitive and direct. Feelings are not as important as logical truth. Their speech is punctuated with imperatives and commands ... men are more apt to brag, threaten, to talk over each other, and to ignore what's said. For men, language can tend to be more of a tool for domination, and a display of status. The goal for men seems to be to impress others with their skill and knowledge.

(Now, I know women who are blunt and aggressive in their speech, and I know men who are sympathetic, kind and thoughtful in their speech ... this is a general tendency.)

This need for male dominance shows up early among boys ... studies at summer camps show that the moment boys get together, they begin to battle each other for status, using ridicule and even violence to establish their hierarchical pecking order. The girls instead used milder ridicule, and flattery of the more dominant girls ... while the boys maintained their hierarchy the entire time they were together, the girls quickly forgot the distinctions, and formed "bonding pairs" in groups of two or three, forming "best friends."

According to some sociologists, the most fundamental difference between male and female psyches is the differing capacities for empathy. In "The Essential Difference," Simon Baron-Cohen says that most men suffer from a mild form of emotional "autism" ... an empathy-disorder. In it's extreme form, it's a type of "mind-blindness", wherein they cannot put themselves into the "shoes of another" ... they cannot feel another's pain, can't even imagine what another is thinking/feeling, and thus cannot respond in a helpful way. These men could be said to have poor social skills ... obsessive interests, and even appear to be somewhat emotionless and overly-logical. According to Baron-Cohen, most men have this struggle to one degree or another ... (& yes, there *are* exceptions -- I'm married to one). Men are just generally not as adept at reading others' emotions, reading facial expressions, or interpreting body language, as are most women.

In studying toddler groups, it's observed that boys have a much harder time sharing than girls ... with girls permitting 20 times more turn-taking than boys. Girls tend to have more egalitarian groups, while boys tend to give orders and make demands.

Criminality is almost solely the domain of men ... with rare exceptions. Statistics across international studies show the same thing -- 80-90% of all crimes are committed by men -- and when the crimes are defined as the violent ones (robbery, murder, sexual assaults), the percentages go up to the 90's. Male on male homicide is 30-40 times more common than female on female (including in prisons).

The opinions about why we have these differences are myriad. But Steve Taylor, author of "The Fall" contends that the differences are just a consequence of the Fall ... that the Fall affected men far more than women ... resulting in a more pronounced ego in men, than in women.

The feminine characteristics - more relational, more feeling-based, less concerned with power and status, a greater sense of empathy, and so on - are exactly those we would associate with a less developed sense of ego, and a less "fallen state of being. On the other hand, the male characteristics - autonomy, obsessiveness,lack of empathy, a high degree of systematising - are exactly those we would associate with a strongly developed sense of ego... In other words, what we think of as "masculine" behaviour is largely the result of the Ego Explosion... It's probably possible to say that the "female psyche" ... is a kind of midway point between the unfallen psyche of primal peoples, and the male fallen psyche.

So, *why* did the Ego Explosion affect males more than females?

One possible reason is that the female psyche never got "walled off" as the male psyche did ... largely due to the woman needing to care for children. Being a mother is about empathy -- feeling with/for another. Having to second-guess, intuitively, what the infant/child's needs were, and responding to them ... while the man was "out there" literally in the wild, fighting each other off for enough food to survive.

Beyond that, women are cyclically "tied to the earth" and to nature ... our biology is rhythmically cyclical (conforming to the lunar calendar), whereas men are steady and "inert". Men are better able to "rise above" their biological pullings, whereas women cannot get away from our connection to nature. In general, women were less exposed to the harsh pressures and realities of the fallen life, which created the "sharpened male ego."

This sharpened male ego also began to perceive the female as a threat to his survival. Men became mind-focused, and saw the body as "less than". Women were a constant reminder of the body, with their menstruation, birthing, and nursing ... so, too, did their sexual allure pose a threat to men's survival ... as man sought to rise above his body's urges, woman became seen as a sexual temptress ... eventually leading to the concept that women were impure and sinful creatures, used by the "devil" to lead men astray from purity.

Woman was blamed for the "fall" according to the story in Genesis (or at least the male perspective's interpretation of the myth). Woman thus could not be trusted ... she was weaker, easily deceived, dangerous. This basic view was expressed by the Jewish Testament of Reuben:

Women are evil, my children ... they use wiles and try to ensnare [man] by their charms ... They lay plots in their hearts against men: by the way they adorn themselves they first lead their minds astray, and by a look they instill the poison, and then in the act itself they take them captive ... So shun fornication, my children, and command your wives and daughters not to adorn their heads and faces."

This antagonism toward women has led to all manner of atrocities ... including the European witch-killing mania from the 1400's through the 1700's (later in some areas), and has been a feature of the three monotheistic Saharasian religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam).

The more men have believed that their bodies are "less than" their minds, the more women have been punished for displaying a connection to the body. Men = purity of mind, whereas women = impurity of body.

Women came to be likened to all that is disgusting ... Marina Warner writes:

"In the feces and urine - in St. Augustine's phrase - of childbirth, the closeness of women to all that is vile, lowly, corruptible, and material was epitomised - in the 'curse' of menstruation, she lay closer to the beast; the lure of her beauty was nothing but an aspect of the death brought about by her seduction of Adam in the garden."

As men came to see that sex was sinful, and that his own sexual desires were to be despised, they thus felt extreme animosity toward women, whom they believed *produced* these desires in them... likening women's allurement to "witchcraft." Men must therefore have absolute control and domination over women, in order to dominate their own bodies, in order to be "pure" ... in order to be acceptable to God.

Even today, in the most-arid regions of the world, women are forced to cover their bodies and faces (and some, their eyes!), and to live as virtual slaves, so that they cannot arouse the powerful and uncontrollable sexual impulses that these men fear make them impure.

The past 6,000 years of man's inhumanity against women is at least in part, man's revenge on women, for this.

And so ... God's gift of sexual desire and expression has been despised by man, and has been used as a weapon against women.

May we awaken from this nightmare...!

Shalom, Dena



(& may I make this CLEAR ... I adore my husband, my men-children, and my men-friends! I do not put men down ... I desire that we all, men and women alike, be free from the ego-explosion, including the destruction of patriarchy -- which hurts men and women alike! Later, we will look at how many men are awakening, even transcending their egos ... integrating the best of the unfallen and fallen psyches, evolving into our next stage of development -- I must commend the transcendent men in my life ... many of whom are reading this blog! And you know who you are!)

Next: Inequality and Child-Oppression

Musing on the Atonement ...

Let me confess right up-front: I am mid-shift regarding the Atonement. I no longer embrace what I was taught (I'll get to that in a minute), and yet I'm not fully settled on what it is that I now embrace ... (& I'll get to that in a minute, too).

I was taught that because we humans had blown in in the Garden, had fallen, had caused the earth to be cursed, and had rendered ourselves totally depraved, alienated/separated from God, and hopeless in our fallen condition ... we can only be reconciled to God if we accept the penal-substitutionary sacrifice of Jesus (who is God), on the cross, who died in our place, to appease God (that remote-God in heaven), because somebody had to pay the price for our sin, which is eternal separation and/or torment in hell.

So, if we boil it all down, we have: God killing God to appease God..?!?

That's no longer makes the intuitive-sense to me - I mean, it doesn't pass the straight-face test, even though I unquestioningly accepted it as "absolute truth" for decades.

First, I no longer believe that we were ever separated from God (how can we be separated from Omnipresence? And even scripture affirms that even in Sheol, the abode of the dead, He is there). I do acknowledge that we can *think* we are separated from God, and our own shame/guilt can cause us to *feel* what we perceive to be a separation from God, but since when do our thoughts and feelings dictate God's reality...? Apparently, despite what the sermons declare, we *DO* create our own sense of reality, based on what we think and feel.

I also see that while God declared all of creation (including us!) to be good, indeed very good, He never took back that assessment. He never said, "OK, now you've blown it -- you ruined my perfect creation, and made it less-than-perfect!" Actually, I don't see where HE ever declared it to be perfect -- just "very good."

Part of that "very good" was the serpent in the garden ... and the likelihood of encountering "him", and the probability of the temptation, and the certaintude of giving in to that temptation (given that God had created the fruit to be pleasing to the eye, and had created humans to be drawn to beauty, and to be drawn to the concept of being like God, knowing good from evil). Part of the "very good" thus seems to be the value of learning from our choices, and from the resulting consequences ... as if the fall was a set-up, and even necessary ... a falling out of the womb into the world of duality (a worldview wherein we judge all we see as either "good" or "evil", which only God can accurately do). It's in this very setting in which we learn who we are not, and thus who we are ...

And along the way, due to how we've believed our skewy and duality-based perspectives, we've had many, many adventures in missing the point...!

We were (individually and collectively) under the illusion of separation, and believing that God had required sacrifice (this goes back to pagan concepts of those angry volcano gods, who seemed to demand virgin daughters and first-born sons in order to be appeased, and thus stop spewing lava and ash all over those fields and villages!). While we have endlessly meticulous details about "how/when/why/where to sacrifice" in the minutiae of the Law (language which doesn't even sound like God to me, but does sound a lot like detail-oriented religious leaders!), we later have God declaring, through the prophets, that He never wanted sacrifice, but instead wanted mercy... He even told us He didn't want to be our Master, but our Husband. Woah. How'd we miss that one?!?

Our dualistic mentality had/has enslaved us ... so, God met/meets us where we were/are. Sorta like, "You want sacrifice? I'll show you sacrifice -- I'll come down there and BE the sacrifice for you, so that you will finally KNOW that I'm the God who loves you, and not the wrathful, vengeful God you keep creating in your own image (& stop doing that - it's so annoying)! This will put an end to all sacrifice, and then we can have the intimate relationship I've been trying to have with you since the very beginning ... I've longed to gather you under my wings, but you wouldn't let Me...!"

And ... sadly, because we created the system of Christianity, which makes a lousy counterfeit for Relationship, we STILL don't let Him...! We continue to believe and promote the man-made doctrine of God being "up there" and us being "way down here" with a huge chasm in between ... even though God was in Christ, reconciling the world (who's that leave out?) to Himself ... even though the Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world. Even though there is NO life except for God's life, and in Him we live and move and have our being. STILL we defend (to the death!) our "absolute" (yet skewy) belief that we are separate from Omnipresence.

What if we need to repent (change our minds) about what we think and believe...?

What if we need to let go of what we think we know, and let the Spirit lead us into all truth..?

What if we need fewer "absolutes" (& fewer disputes) and more irresolutes (for it seems clear to me that we don't allow God to get through our closed mind ... preferring the god we've made in our own image)...?

Shalom, Dena

Unpacking Creation ...! (Part II)

What if we were to (just for fun!) read the Creation stories through a metaphorical lens...? Would we get zapped with lightning, psoriasis, or a major flea infestation for doing so..? Would God fall of His throne...?

Or would we maybe, just maybe, find out that there another way, perhaps even a more plausible way (perhaps even a way that fits well with our spirits - and a way that honors the nature of God!), than the literal story many of us have been taught...?

Only one way to find out!

(WARNING: This will be long. Ain't no other way to unpack it. But I believe you'll be glad you stuck - stook? - it out. I'll be typing this out by hand - my kingdom for a scanner! - so please be gracious with any typos you discover ... I really do know how to spell and use grammar...!)

- A metaphorical ( and thus nonliteral) approach to these stories is not new. In the third century, a Christian biblical scholar named Origen, commonly seen along with Augustine as one of the two most brilliant theologians of the early church, wrote:

What intelligent person can imagine that there was a first day, then a second and a third day, evening and morning, without the sun, the moon, and the stars? [sun, moon and stars are created on the fourth day] And that the first day -- if it makes sense to call it such -- existed even without a sky? [the sky is created on the second day] Who is foolish enough to believe that, like a human gardener, God planted a garden in Eden in the East and placed in it a tree of life, visible and physical, so that by biting into its fruit one would obtain life? And that by eating from another tree, one would come to know good and evil? And when it is said that God walked in the garden in the evening and that Adam hid himself behind a tree, I cannot imagine that anyone will doubt that these details point symbolically to spiritual meaning by using a historical narrative which did not literally happen.

(Preach it brother Origen...! A literal belief is on the level of what children believe, noncritically and nonquestioningly, when their parents tell them something is so ... if we remain spiritual children, if we never critically question that which we've been taught, we're merely parroting the traditions of man ... spiritual propaganda, and nothing more. Further, we miss the deep and rich meaning that the metaphorical rendering contains.)

- In popular language, "myth" is a dismissive term. To call something a myth is to dismiss it; one need not take it seriously. A myth is seen as a mistaken belief, a falsehood. But the term means something very different in the study of religion. Myths are metaphorical narratives about the relation between the world and the sacred. Myths use nonliteral language; in this sense, they do not narrate facts. But myths are necessary if we are to speak at all about the world's origin and destiny in God. We have no other language for such matters.

(Well, duh. I mean, who was there, "in the beginning" to take notes...? We're human, we're limited, we're groping in the dark most of the time ... caught up in our five senses, having this human experience, out of touch with the true spiritual nature of our beings. So too have we been mesmerized by the modern worldview and reliance upon *facts*. In the past 500 or so years, facts = truth. Mysticism has been largely ridiculed ... and yet the Kingdom of God is mystic, spiritual, and "does not come by observation." Perhaps 'tis time to forsake our love affair with facts, or at least to flesh them out with a deeper understanding of the many truths hidden. metaphorically, within myths ...?)

- Myth and reality go together, myth being the language for talking about what is ultimately real. Myths are true, even though not literally true. To cite another definition: "Myth is a form of poetry which transcends poetry in that it proclaims a truth. Myth is poetry-plus, not science-minus.

(YES! Another case for both/and rather than either/or...! What a wonderful all-inclusive God we have! How we limit His speaking to our hearts, how we limit His revelations all around (& in!) us, when we insist upon a literal understanding, and demand that others do so as well...!)

- To the extent that there is a literal affirmation in ancient Israel's creation myths, it is simply this: God is the source of everything that is. The only literal statement in Genesis 1 is "God created the heavens and the earth." God is the source of everything that is in every moment of time. Affirming that God is creator is not primarily a statement about origination in the remote past; rather it is a statement about the present dependence of the universe upon God. If God ceased to vibrate the universe (and us) into existence, it (and we) would cease to exist. The contemporary "big-bang theory" of the universe's origin, which speaks of a moment roughly fifteen billion years ago when the present universe began, is quite compatible with thinking of Creation as historical origination. Indeed, some have seen the primordial "cosmic flash" of the big-bang theory as strikingly similar to the first act of creation on the first day of the Genesis story: "Let there be light." Twenty years ago, a scientist wryly observed:

For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the highest mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.

(Bwa-ha-ha-ha! Even as many theologians/Christians have spent decades striving to climb to the top of the theological ladder, only to discover that it was leaning against the wrong wall..! Ahhhh, we're all in for some shockingly-delightful surprises! I read an old book, "Genesis and the Big Bang," written by a Jewish astrophysicist - his view is that both science and scripture are right ... that the universe was created in "6 days" or over the course of eons, depending on where one was standing in the universe at that time - due to how time "bends". Having not been there, and not having a astrophysical degree, I'm inclined to take his word for it..! I do adore Borg's view of God being the Source of *every*thing, and the on-going Sustainer of all that is ... for I've come to see God in everything - panentheism... which is not pantheism. Look it up if you're curious. Speaking of curiosity ... I do have to admit that mine is piqued with Borg's mention of "this universe" ... wondering, are/were/will there be there others? whether in location or in chronology...? Hmmm...)

- This way of thinking of God as Creator is compatible not only with the current big-bang theory, but also with whatever scientific theory might (and almost certainly will) replace it. Indeed, thinking about creation this way means that the affirmation of God as "maker of heaven and earth" is compatible with any scientific account of the universe's origins. At the level of ultimate origins, there need be no conflict between Genesis and science. The two do not directly compete.

(Whew! Get the word out! We can stop all this caterwauling and in-fighting...! Scientists can embrace those suppressed experiences with God, and believers can stop playing stupid about science...! Truth is truth, whether expressed through sensual evidence, or metaphorical experience...! Sheesh, I almost typed "sensuous evidence" which is an entirely different blog-post, but another great passion of mine!) ;)

- Just as there are two ways of thinking about creation, so there are two models for thinking about the God-world relationship -- that is, the relation of God as creator to the universe. The first is the "production" model. Namely, like an artisan or artist, God makes the universe as something separate from God's self. Once created, the universe exists separate from God, just as a house or a painting exists separate from the builder or artist who produced it. This model is associated with a particular concept of God. Known as "supernatural theism," this way of thinking about God conceptualizes God as "another being" separate from the universe.

(This is what I was taught to believe: "God is holy and wholly Other. God is Way Up There, and you, mere wretched bit of humanity, are way down here. Further, the separation cannot be breached by your efforts - all attempts are futile. So, you need to accept Jesus as your Savior - nevermind that the phrase to "accept" Jesus cannot be found in scripture - and THEN you can get on the treadmill of exerting your own effort to make sure that God continues to like you... because He doesn't really like you, wretch that you are, He only puts up with you because of Jesus. Ok, I'm using hyperbole to make a point -- this is metaphorical, you understand ... no one ever literally laid it out like that to me. But, honestly, is that not an approximate characterization of something that most of you have been taught..? Can you relate to it? To put it succinctly - oops, too late! - I no longer believe in that separation ... and Borg will help me out by getting to that.)

- The second way of thinking about the God-world relation has been called a "procreative" or "emanationsist" model: God brings forth the universe from God's being. Because the universe comes out of God's being, it is in some sense, "God-stuff." This model does not identify the universe with God,for God is more than the universe; rather, it sees the universe as being "of God" and "in God." (In other words, the model is panentheistic. To quote a passage from the NT, God is "the one in whom we [and everything] live and move and have our being." (Acts 17:28)

(YES!!! I adore finding my own dangerous-to-status-quo and thrilling thoughts put forth by another author...! The joy! God keeps whispering the darndest things to my heart, and my spirit jumps up and down in exuberant recognition of truth, even while my "must. maintain. equilibrium." brain hollers all manner of "yeah-buts"..! This transformation business is tough! I've lost sleep, hair, and all manner of friends and ministries! But I've gained GOD...! And peace! And joy! And excitement! I'm becoming ok with morphing into a bald, friendless insomniac..! I mean, well-behaved women so seldom make history...)

- The differences between these two models for thinking about the God-world relation matter. The production model suggests that the universe is separate from God and that creation happened in some past moment. The procreative model affirms the presence of God within and beyond the universe and fits the notion that creation is an ongoing process, not simply a past event. Finally, whereas the production model and it's association with supernatural theism emphasize God's separation from the world, the latter model leads to a much more intimate sense of the closeness of God to the world - indeed, of the presence of God in the world.

(Another Yes! I was reading this morning, and canNOT wait to share it with y'all, in Richard Rohr's book, "Everything Belongs" - get it! read it! - how he sees the world as "enchanted" ... beautifully filled with the Presence of God -- God showing up in all the places He's not "supposed" to. Reminds me of a little plaque I bought this weekend at the art show, spending nearly as much money as I made - and if I've already shared this just smile and metaphorically/indulgently pat me on my lil' head. The plaque read:

I found Jesus.

He was hiding behind the couch the whole time.

LOL! Love it! He's everywhere, and *right there* where we least expect! We go looking all over tarnation for Him, thinking we have to perform all manner of rituals to get Him to "show up" and He's always been *right there* - behind the couch of our heart..!)

- Obviously, the Genesis stories speak of creation using a production model. In short, God is portrayed as creating a universe separate from God. But because this is the language of myth and metaphor, the way we think about the creation stories need not be confined to a semiliteral reading. To cite an analogy, the Bible often speaks of God as a person-like Being; this is the natural language of worship and devotion. But that does not mean that we must think of God as a person-like Being. In any case, whether our thoughts of creation follow a production model or a procreative model, the central truth-claim of the myth remains: God is the Source of everything.

(Wondering if you, like me, almost immediately think of several dire situations, that I cringe to think of as being sourced in God ... crimes, rapes, child-abuse, war, murder, injustice, genocide, etc. Hang on - that gets addressed...!)

- Central to Genesis 1 is the refrain repeated each day of creation: "And God saw that it was good." This does not mean that everything that happens is good. But whatever exists is good.

(I see this as a crucial distinction. I also see that it's critical to realize that we, as limited-humans, are incapable of declaring a thing "good" or "evil". The crucifixion of Jesus, had we witnessed it, would be declared to be "evil" - and yet we now know, in historical hindsight, that it was "good." We're also told that ALL things work together for our good. All things - no exception. We just get stuck-in-time, rather than seeing it from God's POV. Ask any woman if the transition stage in labor is good or evil, the first time she goes through it. Unless she's drugged out the wazoo - and don't get me started on drugs in childbirth! - she's likely to label the experience as "uberly-evil". And yet, as soon as that baby gushes out with that wondermous-wet-wiggle, her world is transformed from abysmal to glorious. The next time she's in transition she'll have a reference point, knowing of the great-good that is about to come. So, too, with the hindsight of experiencing the heart-of-God, we can come to see how the pain we're currently experiencing can be transformed/birthed into joy. Knowing God, we can have our minds renewed with His perspective -- which changes EVERYthing...!)

- The creation story is strikingly world-affirming. Indeed, the Jewish tradition as a whole has consistently been world-affirming, in spite of the horrendous sufferings that Jews have experienced. The affirmation is also central to Christianity, although popular Christianity, with its emphasis on the afterlife, has sometimes seen the world (especially the "flesh") as highly problematic, something to keep at a distance, a place to get through on the way to one's heavenly home. But against all world-denying theologies and philosophies, Genesis affirms the world as the good creation of the good God. All that is is good.

(Getting back to my "other passion" this mindset shows up frequently in the realm of sexuality - largely thanks to Augustine, who clearly needed some Prozac. We see it as "of the flesh" and therefore "bad." But "flesh" is "ego", or "carnal nature" not "body". Jesus affirmed the body by taking one on. That should settle the issue. As for God's view of sex, read Song of Songs/Solomon from the view of an understanding of Hebraic poetry - yes, there are plenty of books out there on the issue. God goes "so far" as to use sexual intercourse as a metaphor for our connection, surrender, and union with Him...! For those who want to delve more deeply into a renewed-mind-view of sex, complete with transparency and humor, check out "Sheet Music" by Kevin Lehman.)

- According to Ancient Israel's stories of Creation, we are the climax of Creation, created in the image of God and given dominion over the earth. Yet we are also "dust creatures," people made of earth. We do not know what ancient Israel meant by affirming that we are created "in the image of God." But whatever it means, it is clear that ancient Israel thought there was something special about us. The paradoxical juxtaposition of our status is expressed in the familiar words of one of the Creation psalms. In the first half of Psalm 8, the author addresses God and reflects on our insignificance:

3 When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,

4 what is man that you are mindful of him,
the son of man that you care for him?

Then the author affirms:

5 You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings [c]
and crowned him with glory and honor.

6 You made him ruler over the works of your hands;
you put everything under his feet

(Now catch what Borg goes into next ... depending on how much you've questioned traditional thinking, this may come as rather shocking to you...)

- The term "the fall" does not occur in the Genesis story of creation. As a description of the events surrounding Adam and Eve's expulsion from paradise, it is largely a Christian label; Jews typically do not speak of "the fall." Within the Christian tradition, "the fall" has commonly been understood to mean "the fall into sin." It has also been associated with the notion of "original sin," which is not simply the first sin, but a sinfulness that is transmitted to every individual in every generation. This latter notion, which goes far beyond what the Bible says, is usually attributed to the brilliant but troubled theologian Augustine around 400 CE. Although the term "the fall" does not occur in the story itself, the story of Adam and Eve's accepting the temptation offered by the snake points to something having gone wrong. The consequences are vivid, evocative, and thorough, Adam and Eve find themselves living east of Eden in a world that must endure toil and sweat for one's bread, and pain and suffering in childbirth.

(just a quick note from me ... in another Bible translation, which relies heavily on documents discovered within the past 100 years - documents ignored by other translations - the word is not "child-birth" but in "child-rearing" ... as in, we will suffer in raising children in this world of perceived separation from God. Further, I no longer see this as a "curse", as in a punishment from God, but a consequence due to our distrust in God, and our perceived separation from Him.)

- But what went wrong? What action, desire or deed, led to such pervasive consequences? The language of the storyteller is evocative, not precise. It does not clearly point to a particular reading. Thus, over the centuries, a variety of understandings of "what went wrong" have emerged.

(Borg then goes into several different theories that humans have come up with...)

- The Primal Act as DISOBEDIENCE: God gave them a command, they disobeyed it, and that was that. For this view in it's most elementary form, it would have made no difference if God's prohibition had been "Please don't eat the daisies." This view typically leads to seeing sin in general as a matter of disobedience: God gives us commands and rules and laws and we break them. The human problem is thus disobeying God the law-giver.

- The Primal Act as HUBRIS: Hubris is a Greek word meaning pride - exceeding one's proper limits - giving to one's self the place that belongs to God alone - making one's self the center. This view focuses on the first half of the serpent's temptation: "You will be like God, knowing good and evil." The desire is to become Godlike. Sin - the human problem - is thus hubris, understood as self-centeredness.

- The Primal Act as SLOTH: It doesn't mean laziness in this context, but "leaving it to the snake." Letting something else author one's existence. It means uncritically accepting somebody else's ideas about how to live one's life. In this view, sin - the human problem - is heteronomy: living the agenda of others.

- The Primal Act as BIRTH OF CONSCIOUSNESS: "Knowing good and evil" is understood broadly to mean having knowledge of opposites, a capability that is intrinsic to the birth of consciousness. Consciousness involves distinguishing one thing from another; above all, it involves the self-world distinction, the awareness that the world is "other" than one's self. This is something we all experience; all of us become aware of the self-world distinction very early in life. Thus we cannot avoid the primal act. Indeed this understanding emphasizes not the disobedience and sinfulness of "the fall" but its inevitability. All of us begin life in the womb with an experiential sense of undifferentiated unity; we begin in paradise. But the very process of growing up, and the birth of consciousness that is intrinsic to it, propels us into a world of division, anxiety and suffering. Living "east of Eden" is intrinsic to the experience of being human. We all go through "the fall" and live in a state of exile and estrangement; it cannot be avoided.

(Selah ... pause and think on that. Wow ...! I've come to believe that, even before reading it here. This rings so *very* true within me. It changes everything, for everything is founded on how we frame the Creation narrative in our minds. What story do we tell ourselves? Do we tell the story that God had a wonderful Plan A, but that we humans blew it, and now God is pissed, and we're being punished, and we have to accept Christ - Plan B - so that God can tolerate us again? What is the fruit, the consequence of that story we've believed? Do we have to continue to believe what we've been told, what we've told ourselves? Can we try on another story, and experience the results/fruit of it? Would how we see God, how we see ourselves, how we see other humans *change*...? Would that change be helpful, or harmful? Is what we believe now helpful or harmful? The questions could go on and on ... get alone with God, and a notebook, and see what you come up for yourself. See what answers come out of yourself... in that spirit/Spirit intersection that is who we really are.)

- These various combinations can be combined. For example the birth of consciousness typically leads to hubris, understood as being centered in one's self. Moreover, centering in one's self intensifies the sense of separation from the world, deepening one's experience of exile. The process of socialization leads to sloth understood as heteronomy - we internalize and live in accord with the agendas of others, including parents, culture and religion. Most of the time, most of us live "east of Eden."

(Sounds a bit like the Creation stories are "everyone's stories" ... just as Rohr says about the Bible as a whole ... the unfolding of awareness ... a metaphorical account of the human experience ... unfolding throughout history ... the macro-story of our own still-being-written life-narrative.)

- Given the richness of meaning that a historical-metaphorical reading of Genesis reveals, the creation stories strike me as profoundly true. Critical thinking leads to an understanding of why the details of Genesis are as they are and also makes clear that their truth is not to be understood in literal, factual terms. Rather, their truth is expressed in the nonconceptual language of myth and metaphor, and no particular reading can exhaust their meanings. But I can hear their central claim: "This" - the universe and we - is not self-caused, but grounded in the sacred. "This" is utterly remarkable and wondrous, a Mystery beyond words that evokes wonder, awe, and praise. We begin our lives "in paradise," but we all experience expulsion into a world of exile, anxiety, self-preoccupation, bondage and conflict. And yes, also a world of goodness, and beauty; it is the creation of God, But it is a world in which something is awry.

The rest of the Bible is to a large extent the story (and stories) of this state of affairs: the human predicament and its solution. Our lives east of Eden are marked by exile, and we need to return and reconnect; by bondage, and we need liberation; by blindness and deafness, and we need to see and hear again; by fragmentation, and we need wholeness by violence and conflict, and we need to learn justice and peace; by self- and other-centeredness, and we need to center in God.

(Beautiful! Inspired! For we all are, indeed God-breathed, inspired. I don't for a minute believe, as I did for a very long time, that we were literally/sp ritually separated from God in "the fall" ... though I do believe that we humans, as a result of experiencing our own "fall" in early life, come to believe that we're separated from God ... the problem, as Paul puts it in his epistle, is that we're enemies *in our minds* ... and as a man thinks in his heart/mind, so IS he. The problem is our perspective. The problem is the lies we believe ... both those we've been taught, and the conclusions we've come up with ourselves. The solution is to experience the reality of God; to have those lies replaced, experientially, with truth. To awaken to ultimate reality. To come to know God as God really is, which is synonymous with knowing ourselves as we really are.)

Tomorrow I plan to share a bit about perspective -- about how our lenses shape how we experience the world around us, ourselves, others, and God.

Shalom, Dena