Why were they not ashamed?
I decided to bear my thoughts :)
A life that is without pretense and fear of judgment is a life without the weight of insecurity. It was natural to be naked... and transparent. Being real on more levels than the physical... that is my take on paradise.
Genesis as well as many parts of the Bible presents God as a loving designer; an artist with intention who places his most beloved creation in a garden with lots of fruits and vegetation for food and animals and wild life for company (not food). The Genesis story represents man's origins in paradise; a place of peace to commune directly with a loving power.
Fastforward to our beautiful modern world where the modus operandi of the human strata is to reduce man, belittle his ideas, encourage habits of self-destruction on a physical and spiritual level... create ways of thinking to discourage boundless ways of thinking and limit possibility... and elevate the self on an on-going game of one-up-over-you.
and we find ourself so far far away from paradise.
We don't only do this to one another. We do this to ourselves.
A life that is abundant can be dashed with a single thought...
In the garden where there was plenty of food from the plants and trees, there were also two special trees that were unique and singular: the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. These two trees were NOT replicating baby trees of knowledge making little forests of trees of life. These trees were to not to be eaten from... as an exercise of choice toward obedience.
A woman shared something to bring the relationship of the forbideen trees to modern light...
She shared that her life was good. She had a wonderful family and life to enjoy but sometimes in her pursuit of a better life and perfection she would get stumped by some singular detail and that she would find herself distracted. And despite the current blessings her life was provided with, she would find herself unhappy about something that she wanted to make under her control and it was that "branch" of thought that would blind her from the life she had.
With that thought, I wondered if I had any trees in my life that distracted me from the paradise that was available to me. Thoughts are powerful things that can create as well as destroy. And I don't want my ignorance nor arrogance in thinking to undermine me to a distracted life that loses sight of the what I have before me.
The innocence of paradise is not about ignorance which is sadly equated to bliss. A distracting lie. Perhaps the innocence of paradise is the awareness and openess of trust which creates in loving relating a nakedness that is free of shame and insecurity.
I can enjoy this way of being in my relationship with God, my family and my friends. Where insecurity comes up, I'll think of the tree and the temptation to want to take a fruit that is a lie. You can't be fed security if you come from a place of insecurity.
JNET
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