MATHETΩN

“Wherein anything is sweet or nourishing, it is [grace of] God. Sin is God-absence. Perverse sin is God-absence willfully attached to God.

“Let us observe a flower. Sweet and beautiful it is God—who thought of it and crafted it. Dry and dead it is God-absence—God leeched out of it. Petals poisoned to slay my lover it is God-absence (God leeched from my lover’s mortal form) wilfully attached to God (sweet and beautiful).

“Let us contemplate gravity. Pulling me straight and steady to the earth as I stand it is God—who engineered it and sustains it. Plunging me down the stairs it is God-absence—God’s intentions accidentally forgotten. Hurtling my enemy toward implacable pavement from seven stories up it is God-absence (God’s intentions ignored) willfully attached to God (pulling him straight and steady).

“Let us listen to a song. Harmonizing and prancing it is God—who computed it and is gladdened by it. Gone off-key it is God-absence—God’s frequencies mismeasured. Jinglingly advising me to perceive women as harlots it is God-absence (God’s love scoffed) willfully attached to God (hear it harmonizing and prancing). …”

“Indeed, it is my theory that God-absence is not natural to a universe and that the Eden-story is evidence of that. In the beginning, I propose, there was no God-absence and no deranging mixtures of God-absence and God. Instead, there was God only, with all his reason, peace, beauty, bounty, love—and there was the possibility of a wish to oppose him. For where there is more than one will, there is the possibility that one will wishes to oppose another. And when God perceived that one will (and here I speak of the Serpent) wished to oppose him, he granted it God-absence—for there is no other way a will can be free. For all that is is God, and God cannot oppose God—only what is not is not God. And so God granted the Serpent God-absence and with that perversion of God—but he kept it out of Eden.

“He kept it out of Eden, but he, foreknowing that a free will may wish to oppose him, provided our Parents’ wills a way. Then the Serpent spake and offered God (‘God is wise’) mixed with God-absence (‘you may be wise as he’, God’s primacy denied)—and our Parents’ wills wished it.

“And then did God curse them and the whole world, and he rent himself, partly, from his universe, with ah! what pangs—and God-absence entered it. Deterioration, famine, forgetting—and Death—entered it. God cursed our Parents and their curses were a picture of earth’s new fractured piebald state—the fruitful ground was now coupled with the endlessness of tilling, the joyful birth was now paired with the agony of bearing.”

“But God did not curse us forever, nor can a universe bear to be, even partly, long reft from him. Earth and skies will someday be reborn—a new Eden.

“Now these are the measures of the world’s current fracture: absence of God, in famine, death, decay; and the mixing of absence-of-God and God to willfully oppose him, in lies, boasts, war.

“And here is a golden needle to thread the gap and and mend the universe: ‘Do to others as you would have them do to you.’ It proves it is the golden needle because it fits the measures of the gap. First, ‘Do to others as you would have them do to you’ implies that we not do to others as we would not have them do to us: this spans the latter gap by stopping our willful opposition of God—we stop harming God and each other. Second (and the needle shows itself even longer, even brighter): ‘Do to others as you would have them do to you’ spans the former gap by filling the absence of God—‘Do feed the hungry, do clothe the poor, do fix the broken, do build the beautiful’—we do for each other as God did for our Parents in Eden.

“In fine, there is no reasonable way to pretend that, could every person in the world, every moment in time, do to others as he would have them do to him, the world’s fracture would not be mended. And so the golden needle proves it fits our world’s gaps precisely—and so proves our Savior who spoke it to us—it is one way he is proved.

“This is all I have to say about the Eden-story tonight.”