The sin of Adam is cosmic in its effects, destroying as it does the primal harmony that prevailed between humans and the rest of creation. So Adam exclaims in his ‘Lament’: In paradise was I joyful and glad: the Spirit of God rejoiced me, and suffering was a stranger to me. But when I was driven forth from paradise cold and hunger began to torment me. The beasts and the birds that were gentle and
All religions in their own way talk about “dying before you die”! They are all indeed saying that something has to die. We all know this, but often religions have chosen the wrong thing to kill, which has given us a very negative image. In almost all of history it was always the “other,” the heretic, the sinner, the foreigner that had to die. In most ancient cultures it was the virgin daughters and eldest
We are all powerless, not only those physically addicted to a substance. Alcoholics simply have their powerlessness visible for all to see. The rest of us disguise it in different ways and overcompensate for our more hidden and subtle addictions and attachments, especially our addiction to our way of thinking. We all take our own pattern of thinking as normative, logical, and surely true, even when it does not fully compute. We keep doing the
Claiming the Sacredness of Our Being Are we friends with ourselves? Do we love who we are? These are important questions because we cannot develop good friendships with others unless we have befriended ourselves. How then do we befriend ourselves? We have to start by acknowledging the truth of ourselves. We are beautiful but also limited, rich but also poor, generous but also worried about our security. Yet beyond all that we are people with
“Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of all who fall asleep.” ~1 Corinthians 15:20 St. Paul seldom leaves the message at the level of “believe this fact about Jesus.” He always moves it to “this is what it says about you!” or “this is what it says about history!” Until we are ourselves pulled into the equation, we find it hard to invest ourselves in a distant religious belief. Paul normally
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