Imagine yourself standing in a field filled with bushes and trees surrounding you. You look down, seeing your bare feet. It occurs to you that not just your feet look bare. All of you looks bare. What might be your first thought?
As an infant we found ourselves naked often, and we thought nothing about it. We splashed in a tub filled with warm water. We laughed and threw water all around. Being naked never occurred to us as anything to worry about. Nakedness felt normal. Let me ask you now to use your imagination to consider how Adam and Eve felt in the Garden of Eden, where nakedness mattered not. What did they feel?
Might it be freedom, yes? Maybe you felt this freedom as a younger person, too. And so…
Welcome to the first journey of seven journeys we travel during our life, starting with utter freedom as residents in the Garden of Eden. When we first entered this world, we experienced complete independence. Our arms and legs went this way and that. Miraculously we got fed. Often we splattered water all over. And we slept deeply, traveling through delightful dreams not knowing that our dreams differed from the real world. What joy!
Our first journey in life begins with total delight. We lack any awareness of self, never saying to ourselves or to anyone else, “My name is Tom. I am Tom.” We flow through time just like all the rest of stuff in the world – trees, birds, bees, and leaves. We find ourselves traveling in strollers or in someone’s arms. We experience light and darkness without any concern. We smell delicious scents. We grow hungry and receive food and drink. Our bed feels soft and comfy. When we cry we get attention and love. Oh, what joy!
Then life happens…
When we decide we can walk across a room, we fall and scrape our knee. “Ouch!” Large beings strap weird looking tortuous things around our feet, making it difficult to walk. “Quit it!” We like the feel of bare feet that grab the carpet that helps propel us. These weird torture instruments make it impossible to feel the carpet. “Leave me alone.” And these constricting things tied on our feet make walking impossible. And we get hot crawling and standing and moving about the room and this thing around our shoulders and waist makes us hotter and hotter. When we pull this hot thing off, the large beings put it back on us, saying, “Don’t take off your shirt. Don’t do that!” And so, life begins.
Our first journey in life begins with rapture and progresses to accommodation, following the rules of the large beings, like our parents. As we grow, these large beings force us to learn how to put spoonfuls of food into our mouths all by ourselves. In time we learn how to tie our shoes. (I hate shoes.) We discover how to use the toilet. And our teeth get loose, needing to be pulled out. If luck provides, we get money for the lost tooth. “Yeah.”
Our first journey in life is nothing less than a roller coaster with its ups and downs, good and bad, joyful and sad. It continues through our adolescence; and, we get more and more indoctrinated into what it means to be an adult. Because of our hormones we fall in lust every day and never grow tired of the prospects of being another person’s partner. Some of us graduate from high school actually believing that we know the meaning of life.
Our first journey in life often feels wonderful, but it frequently confuses us. We meet people and actually have no clue about what’s going on in their head. I picture Adam and Eve looking at each other and wondering, “What am I supposed to do with him or her? And what are they planning to do with me? We wonder, “Anyone out there who can help me and teach me what’s going on here?”
Of course the serpent would be very pleased to teach us how to act. The wise serpent says, “You want to know what’s going on? Please yourself; that’s what’s going on. Here’s a nifty piece of fruit sweet to the taste and easy to grab.” No large beings or parents are around to say, “Don’t do it”. No God. No nothing. So we say, “Sure. Sounds good.”
Then we find ourselves undone. Our first lesson in life teaches how we undo ourselves – that is, how we mess up all the good stuff going on in our life to meet the wants and expectations of another person. Of course, this lesson never occurs for some, because some of us float through our infancy, childhood, and adolescences with secure friends and family; and, we go into adulthood trusting friends and family and live a joyful life for at least quite a long time. However, being undone can occur at anytime; and, learning from this lesson can develop wisdom. As we experience suffering, we learn how to deal with it – a very important lesson, indeed. Sometimes being undone happens later in adult life. All seems to be going well for quite a long time, and, then, BOOM. The roof caves in on our lives. What shall we do when this occurs? Wisdom teaches this: “If all is good, let it be. When all is bad, learn from it.”
On our first journey through life – the Garden of Eden Journey – we discover how to figure out some of life’s game rules for the next decade or two. On our first journey, we struggle through seemingly endless challenges, and those struggles teach us how to adapt, readying us for the second journey of life, which in biblical terms is called “Why is tonight different form all other nights? Why am I seeing life differently than before?” We come to a time in our life when life seems different than it was before. We ask ourselves, “How have I changed over the past few years, and What’s next?”
Welcome to Journey No. 2.
Tom Towns is pastor of First United Methodist Church in Cortez.