How was it possible for creatures of innocence to fall, as our first parents are said to have done? The persuasions of the serpent are so cynically conceived that it seems that for Eve to have believed them, she must have “fallen” before it ever appeared; how could someone who had walked with God in the cool of the evening, believe it would be possible to become his equal by eating apples.
I believe the answer is that if our will is divided, if we are flawed, it is not be through paradise lost, but in creation itself needing to be completed through the acceptance of time, as Mother Eve did.
An eternal, deathless paradise cannot suffice for any sentient being. Without time, and fertility, memory becomes as partial and unreliable as a dream. Though we may wish for these gifts to be taken from us, what could a paradise be without them?
Eve took upon herself the choice which every one of her children has had to make: whether to be on the side of life, or perfection. Her choice was born of longing not defiance.
At times in the malevolent sparkle of the lakes as the sun goes down, in the leer of young men toward the women they wish to bed, in the hateful glitter of cities that look out on the world as through a million prismed insect eye, I wonder if we were not Satan made and God-tempted. Perhaps God came upon us in the guise of the serpent, tempting a race of insect people into time, splitting us out of a hard and glittering shell.
The Garden
Satan’s kingdom was replete with silent music compressed in a crystal sphere. The music formed an ever sweeter and deeper silence; in the same way that white light contains every color and yet appears colorless. It contained in itself every melody ever to be thought. Every sound made by every creature in the garden added its own richness to a harmony already complete in itself.
This was our first home. We were created by Satan out of that music of perceptible silence that, rested on a knife-edge between time and eternity. Adam and Eve were constructed by the Adversary more bird than lizard, more insect than birds. He laughed to himself at this joke of his, a parody of the angel beauty that he had lost.
His two creatures had iridescent wings and were covered in living nacreous armor. His chest, her breast reflected a cold dazzling fire back to the sun. Her cleft, his crest were barbed chitinous things. Along their legs and the ridge of the back there were spines and feathers, each with a blue and green eye. When they spoke it was like the sound of glass breaking. surrounding them always was a scent sharp and sweet; indescribable but somewhat like the taste of honey and cinnamon.
Their movements created a great symphony of iridescent hues and outlines. And they lived solely for their voiceless song and sterile embrace, repeated without joy or weariness from morning till night.
Satan said, “Be timeless Eve” and thus God took upon Herself the role of a great tempter, lying in wait one night in the bottom of the garden while Satan lay sleeping inside a mirror. The lustrous snake came slithering on his belly, ‘For he so loved the world that he humbled himself.’
Among the sparkling gemstones God lay singing of time and remembrance and His song carried a simple sweet melody, which Eve to her amazement heard with terror and wonder. “Cry only once Eve,” She said, “and your tears will explode this dome of glass.”
Looking into the serpent’s ancient eyes, listening to Her song, Eve began to weep. The shell and feathers split off her back and the first day began with a gentle rain and the sound of our mother weeping. Whether from regret or happiness, she could not have said. The gems fell into blossom. The sea found its voice in the fishes, the birds were spoken by the air. The Fire gave up insects and the earth heard the first animal cry. God looked upon Her work and saw it was good.
We came up the sea slug way. We have in our bodies tides and residues of everything that has ever lived. All the anger, the passions, the joys of the world enfold us. We are born entangled in a web, already a billion years old before we draw a single breath.
We can struggle against the web, evoke paradise and die, or see ourselves translucently. We are not divided but related, not flawed but overwhelmed with gifts.
To think that our original state was timeless, that only by fatal accident we were ensnared by death, is to cling to innocence in the face of overwhelming grace.
If God had wanted to make us single and entire in a flash of lightning, She would have done so. She made us as She did in the way She did as a testament, not sparing fertility or invention in the world. -How can we dream of a paradise?
We must seek a principle that gives and yet remains itself- a garden unwalled, yet ordered; a garden of unselfconscious delight.
But who can love and forgive all? Who can truly love both lions and lambs? Who can even heal the division between men and women? And yet these pitiful little walled gardens of philosophy and politics, of theology, of ideals, of hopes, are no answer. Though I do not know how, I want to remain faithful to Eve’s choice. I will not long for paradise and neither will I accept the world. I will suffer with it like a midwife waiting for something to be born; where everything hangs in the balance and only a very little can be done.