Continuing Fall Ch 3...

This story opens us up to the possibility of our capacity for acting in both good and evil ways and this duality exists in all people. Welcome to the exploration of the shadow. We can choose whether to act out of our better selves or our darker impulses.



What immediately arises from this new found freedom is covered in the next few chapters. The man blames the woman, who blames the serpent. Duality casts a shadow on childbearing and creates new ground rules. In the following chapters, the situation worsens with Cain’s murder of Abel, Lamech’s cry for unlimited vengeance, the cheapening of life through universal violence that provokes the Flood. There is not so much a single fall in Genesis 3 as there is a process of a continuing fall through out the prologue.

We see that humans tend to be alienated - alienated from each other; alienated from our bodies, alienated from the natural world around us, and alienated from right here, right now, alienated from the sense of the Divine in each of us.


Americans are lonelier than they have ever been USA Today reported in 2006 that Americans have a third fewer close friends and confidants - a sign that people are living lonelier, more isolated lives than in the past. In 1985, the average American had three people in whom to confide matters that were important to them. In 2004, that number dropped to two, and one in four had no close confidants at all - not a single person - whom they felt close enough to confide in. "You usually don't see that kind of big social change in a couple of decades," says study co-author Lynn Smith-Lovin, professor of sociology at Duke University in Durham, N.C

The census tells us that one-quarter of all US households contain only one person. Now there is certainly nothing wrong with living alone. But what these numbers suggest is that there are many Americans who are disconnected from other people. And they suggest that when people participate with us in community they are looking for connection; they they are looking to belong! And they are looking for something to connect them - or to reconnect them - with their sense of awe and wonder, with their sense of holiness, of sacredness - right here in the world they inhabit. In short, what they are looking for is Divine Luminosity. And when we are able to connect with this Light, we bring out the best ourselves. We feel our sense of connectedness with all the creatures of the earth. We are able to live out of hope, not out of fear. Throughout history, many figures have demonstrated this relational model. Buddha, Jesus and Muhammad, the Dalai Lama, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Theresa, Desmond Tutu and Thich Nhat Hanh.

What would living out of this space this look like on a normal day?

Hafiz offers us these clues in a poem titled: If It Is Not Too Dark

Go for a walk, if it is not too dark.
Get some fresh air, try to smile.

Say something kind
To a safe-looking stranger, if one happens by.

Always exercise your heart's knowing.
You might as well attempt something real

Along this path:
Take your spouse or lover into your arms

The way you did when you first met.
Let tenderness pour from your eyes

The way the Sun gazes warmly on the earth.
Play a game with some children.

Extend yourself to a friend.

Sing a few ribald songs to your pets and plants
Why not let them get drunk and wild!

Let's toast

Every rung we've climbed on Evolution's ladder.

Whisper, "I love you! I love you!"
To the whole mad world.

Let's stop reading about God -We will never understand Him.
Jump to your feet, wave your fists,

Threaten and warn the whole Universe
That your heart can no longer live

Without real love!