* dedicated to Lisa ****
Genesis 3:7 And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that
they were naked; and they sewed fig-leaves together, and made
themselves aprons.
---------------------[Fallen from Your Grace, I Reflect: Some Things,
I Shouldn't Know]
It is as though a paraplegic, marvelously skilled in the complex
maneuvering of a wheelchair, were to despise the healthy as belonging
to a lower order because they walk simply, in blithe ignorance of the
complexity of movement that the paraplegic knows so well.
Your hair, long as it is
black
Falls from your hands as you
let it go
spreads over your back
for a moment, covers your face
so symmetrical and eyebrows flawlessly
arched
Eyes as dark as my thoughts without you
Before....
Before
I fell from your grace
For me, you have never
pushed asunder
the black silk tresses canvassing
your alluring eyes
you only exhibit to me mystery
a relationship veiled
a heart aloof
conversations muted
e-mails yet to be responded to
or even
(years pass)
acknowledged
Your silence is knowledge
that debilitates and debases
yet it is my expertise
My ignorance now surely bliss
Lisa, I want to return to those days in our Eden
of comfortability words freely spoken
gazing directly into your irises
We walked in streams of living water then
creation our footstool
I curse the branches of the tree of evil
(from which I did eat)
that awakened me
to your disdain
(LISA AND YOUR BLACK HAIR - I DON'T WANT TO KNOW YOU IN THIS WAY)
-From www.biblegateway.com
See here what is commonly the folly of those that have sinned. They
have more care to save their credit before men, than to obtain their
pardon from God. The excuses men make to cover and lessen their sins,
are vain and frivolous; like the aprons of fig-leaves, they make the
matter never the better: yet we are all apt to cover our
transgressions as Adam. Before they sinned, they would have welcomed
God's gracious visits with humble joy; but now he was become a terror
to them. No marvel that they became a terror to themselves, and full
of confusion. This shows the falsehood of the tempter, and the frauds
of his temptations. Satan promised they should be safe, but they
cannot so much as think themselves so! Adam and Eve were now
miserable comforters to each other! (Ge 3:9-13)
- From www.literatureclassics.com
In secular circles, the Fall is often presented as a kind of felix
culpa (fortunate Fall); it is argued that Adam and Eve "awakened" by
eating of the forbidden fruit, that they in effect "grew up." (There
is also a sort of felix culpa circulating among some Christians, who
see the Fall as fortunate because it brought us the grace of Christ;
but how necessitating the crucifixion of God can be seen as
fortunate, I cannot conceive.) The secular view has worked its way
deep into the human (and particularly the academic) mind; this may be
because we tend to remember the part about "the tree of knowledge"
but drop the part about "knowledge of...evil." Thus, God is seen as
deliberately withholding knowledge from man, and man's grasping at
the forbidden fruit becomes a Prometheus-like rebellion. But the
picture here is of an innocent--not an ignorant--creation. C.S.
Lewis tackles this issue in his book Perelandra. In it, he tells an
alternate allegory of the creation story, in which the man and woman
do not fall. Having refused the forbidden thing, they are not left
without understanding; rather they are more aware than they would
have been had they disobeyed: "We have learned of evil, though not
as the Evil One wished us to learn. We have learned better than that,
for it is waking that understands sleep and not sleep that
understands waking." Richard John Neuhaus says it differently in his
book Death on a Friday Afternoon. The fall cannot be, he argues, an
intellectual maturing: "It is as though a paraplegic, marvelously
skilled in the complex maneuvering of a wheelchair, were to despise
the healthy as belonging to a lower order because they walk simply,
in blithe ignorance of the complexity of movement that the paraplegic
knows so well."
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