Eve

by William Paul Young

  “Do you feel up to this?” Simon asked. “It is up to you.”

  “This is why I’m here, isn’t it?” she said. “So let’s just get it over with.”

  Moving her took a little work, but as Lilly let herself relax, she was unexpectedly enfolded in a superb sense of comfort. Whatever this device was, it was good at what it did.

  The next instant Lilly found herself standing on a wooded, rocky hill looking down onto a sweeping plain bustling with activity. She was alone, surrounded by massive trees, and her body didn’t hurt. In fact, nothing hurt. When she reached out to lean against a tree, it reacted to her touch with melodic laughter.

  Startled, Lilly jumped away. She had leaned against Han-el.

  “Now you’re a tree?” She giggled but was glad for the Angel’s visible presence.

  “No, but perhaps I appear as you expect,” Han-el sang. “And you are in a forest.”

  Lilly laughed aloud. Pleasure caught her by surprise. It came easily, as if she’d taken her first deep breath in days. Looking at her hands and arms, she found no sign of the serpent’s strike, nor its spreading poisons. Lifting the hem of her dress, she squealed in delight. Both feet were hers. Had she been so caught up in the grandeur of the Beginnings that she hadn’t noticed?

  Lilly took a step and then twirled like a little girl, her face tilted toward the sun. Golden threads of light streaked through the canopy and tenderly kissed her cheeks. She closed her eyes.

  “Han-el, what am I here to witness?”

  “Look there.”

  Opening her eyes, she saw Han-el point to a rock ledge about a hundred yards away. It projected ten feet above a broad plain that teemed with movement. Lilly blinked, and that quickly she and the Angel were standing at the center of the activity. Adam was nearby, surrounded by Fire and Wind and Adonai. He pointed at a rotund hippopotamus and after a thoughtful moment announced, “River horse.”

  “I know what Adam’s doing,” she realized, suddenly perturbed.

  “Yes, this is the final day of naming,” said Han-el. “Since Adam’s turning, God has opened up this way for him to re-turn to Them, to trust.”

  “He has already turned?” Lilly was stunned. Again, it was too late. “Han-el, how is naming animals an invitation back to trust?”

  “Look and understand. Adam no longer sees what you are able to see. In turning his face away, he believes he is alone. That lie has already twisted his vision. For Adam there is no Person in Wind and Fire. There is only Adonai, and even Adonai is fading.”

  “But Adam was tricked! By the serpent! It told Adam he was alone.”

  “No. Adam empowered the snake and now it speaks on his behalf.”

  Adam sank to the ground at Adonai’s feet and dropped his head into his hands. “I am all alone,” he uttered, as if it were the last word he might ever speak.

  “The naming is complete!” declared Han-el in tones of minor keys. “The naming did not give Adam what he hoped.”

  Adonai reached out to touch Adam’s crown. His hand rested there. What happened next was like a kaleidoscope turning.

  Lilly witnessed Adonai place Adam into a deep and loving sleep atop a feather bed of celestial wings. A canopy of woven reeds sheltered him as he lay still, attending Angels ready. Time lapsed. Days slipped into months. Adam’s belly grew, expanding with a pregnancy. And then time came to a stop.

  In nine months God fashioned the feminine side of Adam’s humanity, the female who slept within, into a breathtaking being of corresponding power but weak and fragile as the source from which she was withdrawn.

  Creation held its collective breath. Adonai opened up his son, and the she was taken out of the he, one separating into two. No longer would either ever be the all, and yet Adonai promised that by Love’s knowing, the two could one day choose to celebrate as one. The wide expanse of God’s one nature was now expressed in two, the female and the male, both by nature designed to live face-to-face with Father, Son, and Spirit.

  The infant girl’s cry pierced and penetrated Eden’s night, and from there Messengers again carried celebration’s news into the vast reaches of creation.

  Lilly watched as God closed Adam’s flesh. Then He stooped and kissed the man, waking him from sleep’s depths. Adam rose and touched his side, which was already healing. Then Eternal Man held out the baby girl clothed in love and light and wonder. When Adam took her in his arms, he threw back his head and laughed in jubilation.

  “At long last! This is my kind, my bone, and my flesh. She shall be named Isha, a weakness, because she has been drawn out of Ish, my strength.”

  Lilly began to clap and dance, delighted. She flung her hands outward and twirled and shouted with the rest of creation. But when she noticed that Han-el’s and Adonai’s expressions were similar looks of somber resignation, she slowed and then stopped.

  “Han-el? Why aren’t you happy?”

  “I am ecstatic. She is Love’s response to Adam’s choice of turning. I perceive that in her participation God will craft redemption and reconciliation, but I also see in Adonai’s face that there will be a cost. That saddens me.”

  “Her coming doesn’t save him from his turning?”

  “It promises to.” The Singer left it at that.

  “What will happen to Adam?”

  “In turning to her now, he has stepped away from the precipice, but only for a time. She is Adonai’s invitation to embrace frailty and softness, to be whole and unashamed, to return fully from his turning. But this power of face-to-face will never be enough.”

  Lilly shook her head, realizing. “Isha. He didn’t call her Eve. He named her, like he did the beasts and birds, didn’t he?”

  “Yes!” Han-el’s voice had become a lament. “Even now he could not stop himself from bending away from God toward power and dominion. He named her ‘weak and fragile’—the truth about his own being, of which he is ashamed. So he will try to separate himself from truth and choose aloneness as his strength, as if he could be like God apart from God.”

  Lilly tentatively held out her hand to the Angel, not knowing if Han-el would accept her comfort. Reaching out, the Singer took her arm, with a grip soft and powerful. The Angel’s strength and sorrow flowed into her.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, referring to Adam.

  “I am too.” And Lilly somehow felt that Han-el was referring to her as well.

  “But here,” the Singer added, “the story has only begun. Look!”

  Again time spun and accelerated: Isha too nursed at God’s breasts and took her first tottering steps into Adam’s arms. She walked in woods and fields, a girl clothed inside Fire and Wind, holding hands with Eternal Man. Soon Lilly could see hints of Eve’s regal bearing emerging. Eden’s girl grew quick in her understanding and blossomed inside the laughter and adventures of relationship. As she matured, so did the depths of her love and affection for Adam, and his for her: the flirtatious glances, the grins without a reason. The joy they took in each other had no limit.

  But when conversations with Adonai turned from the wonders of creation to those of procreation, Lilly looked away, feeling a shame she could not define. But these two were unaware, anticipating the pleasure and beauty of this design. They laughed and teased, knowing that when the right time was appointed, their union in Love would be wondrously enjoined.

  The girl became a woman, tenacious and quick of wit, swift and strong. She sometimes explored the garden on her own, but when she danced, it was to the music of God’s boundless affection, which always brought her back into Adam’s open arms.

  But Adam began to drift. Lilly noticed the shadow cast by his withdrawal before Eve did. It appeared incrementally: a sentence left unfinished, a smile a little out of tune, a gentleness withheld. Dread rose in Lilly’s heart.

  “I don’t want to see this part,” she said to Han-el.

  The Angel’s voice was tender. “I understand, Lilly. Are you asking to return to the place from where you have come?”


  “Yes!” And that was all it took.

  • • •

  “OKAY!” LILLY ROSE UP straight, surprising John, who had just sat down next to her. Her reckless movement startled her too, especially as her pain reasserted itself. She groaned and closed her eyes, willing the hurt to the margins. Slowly, she refocused on John. “I have questions!”

  “Questions?” he exclaimed. “You were gone less than two minutes.”

  “That’s all?” The heat of fever returned to her cheeks. “Well, according to Gerald, two minutes could be two million years. I don’t understand why I witnessed what I did just now!”

  “Uh . . .” John scratched an itch at his hairline. “I don’t know what you saw.”

  “You chose to be a Witness,” commented Simon, and Lilly twisted to find him in the room. She had forgotten he was there. “But you can’t choose what you will see.”

  “I didn’t choose to be a Witness. Apparently I don’t get to choose anything. Who chooses what I see?”

  “The Wisdom of God decides,” Simon stated.

  “And who chooses what gets recorded?”

  The men looked at her blankly.

  “I don’t understand the question,” John said. “Everything is recorded.”

  “Oh brother.” She sighed and shifted, uncomfortable in the limitations of her body while the memory of dancing was so fresh. “You aren’t going to understand until you see for yourself. C’mon, let’s get this recorded so I can ask my questions.”

  They wheeled her straight to the Records Room, stopping only to invite Anita and Gerald to come along.

  When Lilly touched the table, the transfer began, and everyone observed her experience. When the process was complete, she lifted her hands and turned to the four. Gerald was standing with his hands over his mouth, Anita was shaking her head, and John and Simon looked as stunned as the other two.

  “What?” the girl demanded.

  Gerald was first to speak. “I have studied the texts for years and did not understand the depths of what happened. Not that I do now,” he was quick to add. “I feel as if I have been looking at the mountain of Scriptures from the bottom of a valley, and now I’m actually standing on the mountaintop.”

  “What we have witnessed,” replied Anita in a solemn tone, “was the beginning of Adam’s turning.”

  “No! That’s my point!” Lilly was confused and exasperated. A new pain radiated along the full length of her spine and launched a headache. “The naming is the result of Adam’s turning, not the beginning of it. I witnessed the first stages, but for some reason the recording skipped over that part—the part when Adam talks to a snake that gives him a knife? And then what? The universe explodes?”

  By the expressions on the others’ faces, Lilly realized she had again inadvertently exposed herself, but in the moment she was more perturbed than self-conscious.

  “Wait!” John said. It was as loud as Lilly had ever heard him speak, except when she was seizing. That flash of memory made her bite her lower lip to avoid smiling. It felt somehow good to hear John be loud!

  Everyone was silent while John collected his thoughts.

  “Lilly, maybe you should tell us about this conversation between Adam and the snake? And about the knife?”

  She told the story as completely as she could remember, including Eve’s presence and Adonai’s sadness. As Lilly talked, grief replaced curiosity on every face but one; Simon looked agitated and began to pace.

  When she finished, the silence went on for several minutes. Then Gerald spoke, “The moment of the turning has never been recorded.” He shook his head.

  John rose and went to a cluttered shelf near the slots that housed the recording tablets. He began to rummage.

  “Lilly, you must understand,” said Anita. “Every evil the universe has endured, every betrayal and loss, every wrong that has been committed in the name of good or evil, all the suffering of creation—it originated in Adam’s turning. Before this there was nothing that was not good. Nothing. To the contrary, everything was very good.”

  “Han-el said something like that,” Lilly offered. “But I don’t get it. Where did Adam go wrong? I keep thinking it’s the snake’s fault.”

  “No,” responded Anita. “The serpent did not originate the darkness of the turning. It was Adam.”

  “I don’t understand.” Lilly wheeled her chair back and forth, which helped her think. “Why is everything about turning? It’s not like Adam lied or killed somebody.”

  “Sadly, it will lead to that, and very soon,” said John. He lifted a sticklike device off the shelf. “Maybe this will help.” He twisted it near its base and instantly it produced a blinding light, powerful and focused. Lilly had to shield her eyes.

  “This light, while dazzling, will not hurt you,” he assured her. “Please, trust me. Would you look directly into it, then let me ask a question?”

  She did. At first she squinted; then her eyes adjusted and the beam became entirely soothing. In fact her headache, which had spread across the back of her skull, now receded.

  “So,” continued John, “as you are fully facing this light, how much darkness do you see?”

  “I don’t see any,” she responded. “There’s no darkness at all.”

  “Exactly. So, another question. How would any darkness or shadow of any kind occur?”

  “Something could block it?”

  “True, but what if there was nothing and no one who could block it?”

  It only took a second before she knew the answer. “I would have to turn away. That is the only way that a shadow would be possible.”

  “Precisely,” John affirmed. “God is light, and in Them there is no darkness at all. None! And God, who is light, embraces the whole created universe. By turning away from God, Adam cast a shadow, his own shadow. Adam has dominion and drags the serpent and creation into his own shadow.”

  John twisted off the light.

  Gerald stepped forward. “Lilly, I hope this might help too.” He wiped his hands on his shirt as if cleaning them, and then awkwardly reached as if to take her face in his hands.

  “May I?”

  Her first reaction was to pull away, but she agreed, not wanting to hurt his feelings. His palms were smooth and warm.

  “When you and I are like this, completely face-to-face, what is one thing that would never occur to you?”

  Again, it took a moment before Lilly understood. “It would not occur to me that I was alone.”

  “Exactly!” Gerald released her and stepped back. “Adam was completely surrounded by the love of God, face-to-face-to-face, as Anita said. No matter where he turned, he was face-to-face with Love, so he turned to the one place unthinkable . . .”

  Lilly finished his thought. “He closed his eyes and turned away from face-to-face and into himself, and when he did that, he believed he was alone!”

  John restated the thought for clarity. “When you are really face-to-face, you know you’re not alone.”

  The realization was staggering. “So, why didn’t Adam turn back? Re-turn?”

  Anita answered. “Once Adam believed that his turning was the good, darkness became his reality. Control replaced trust, imagination took the place of word, and power the place of relationship and love. His own darkness redefined his understanding of everything, including God. He quickly forgot that he had even turned. He is still the son of God, the epitome of creation with authority and dominion, but now asserts this as independent power. Sadly, all of us, as Adam’s children, continue to live in the shadow of death, each of us determining on our own what is good and evil.”

  “All because of turning!” Gerald said. “Without trust in the word or character of God, death is our contribution. That is the legacy we continue to perpetuate, unleashing principalities and powers to serve the beasts of politics and religion. We replace our desire for union, which originates in God, with self-satisfying lusts for conquest. We sanctify money as if it were life’s blood; we turn ar
t into propaganda and weapons into instruments of worship. For the good of the many, we would sacrifice the one, over and over and over, the ends justifying means, all for the good, of course—as we each determine it.”

  Silence met his words, not only because the outburst seemed out of character. Gerald’s intensity and passion carried weight, and everyone respected it. Finally, Lilly broke the quiet.

  “But we’re Eve’s children too, aren’t we? And she wasn’t even there when Adam turned.”

  “She was there, inside Adam,” said Simon, “but not yet awake. One purpose for taking her from within him was the gracious mercy of God inviting Adam to re-turn. She was withdrawn to call him back to his humanity. If only Adam had been stopped!”

  Tension gripped the base of Lilly’s neck once more. She tried to massage it out, but her arm and hand ached from the venom spreading through her veins.

  “I think you should rest,” announced Gerald. “I need to lie down for a while myself. This grieving is too much at times, and I am feeling overwhelmed.”

  “Adam must have broken God’s heart,” Lilly said, thinking out loud. The others nodded.

  “I know what it’s like to see the one you love turn away,” Simon said, then left the room.

  Anita comforted her with a motherly kiss atop her head. Lilly soon lay in her bed, heartache’s tears flowing like a river onto her pillow. She felt that she had witnessed the saddest day of history, and although she shed tears for Adam, and for God, and even for herself, she especially wept for Eve.

  Fourteen

  * * *

  STORED LOSSES

  A hand covered Lilly’s mouth and a heavy weight held her down. Her eyes snapped open and she flailed her good arm, barely able to breathe in the space between the fingers.

  “Shhh!” a voice commanded, and panic overwhelmed her before she recognized who it was. Simon. Slowly she stopped resisting, and he released her.

  “Simon,” she whispered harshly. Her heart continued to race. “You totally scared me. What are you doing here?”

  “We have to talk.” Pleading desperation filled his eyes. She nodded and converted her bed into a chair.