stare [a poem]

everyone looks

across

at a pair to stare into

brows rise

over orbs

tinted with laughter

looking

leaning

laughing

they all have eyes

to look into.

almost had it

Yep, she gets it.

I want to go buy a bunch of old china and throw it up against a wall, just because it makes such an amazing pile of brokenness afterwards...

Adam, Eve, and the Question of Death

In contemplating my newfound state of singleness, I’ve been going over the biblical picture of the man-woman relationship. In doing so I’ve ended up back in the beginning of it all. Odd that I have ended up going backward in my quest to move forward. But look back I’ve found I must. And now I find myself looking all the way back.

I’ve always found it remarkable that the first love story is so simplistic. Adam didn’t date a bunch of Eves before finding “the one.” She was always the one; she was the only one. And she was given to Adam by God.

After spending two years with a man I was convinced I’d marry, life without him is utterly foreign. I almost feel as if I’m living someone else’s life. It’s not a dark and gloomy sort of life, but it’s just not mine.

All of this has led me to wonder how it was when Adam or Eve lost the other to death. Their sin in the Garden had sealed their death, but they still walked out of Eden together. In each other they held on to one blessing God had given. Both were cursed, but they endured together. Both saw their older son kill their younger, but they went through it together. Adam was cursed to toil and work over the ground, but he always came home to Eve. Eve gave birth to Adam’s children and endured the painful curse of child birth each time. But they were Adam’s children, and he was blessed through her pain.

But they died. I wonder who went first. We know they lived for several hundred years. Were they surprised when death came?

What if Eve went first? Did Adam watch her grow tired, weary, and sick? What did her last day look like? Did she die quietly in her sleep? I can see Adam lying next to her, old and decrepit himself, his arm beneath her head, his face bowed down close to hers, sharing her last breaths. He just listens to her inhaling—feels her exhaling. Each breath comes slower and slower. Every time she exhales he wonders, “Will she breathe again? Will her chest rise again as she grasps for one more breath, one more moment to stay in my arms?” He strokes her hair away from her face and dribbles water onto her thin, dry lips. This woman, this mother of all humanity, is slowly losing her grip on life as Adam holds her. God is drawing her away.

Let me pause here and mention a thought I have repeatedly been struck by. Adam probably clearly remembered those first moments with Eve. God brought her to him, and the two were man and wife. This was in response to God seeing Adam’s loneliness. Adam has his work in the garden and he had named all the animals, but he was still alone. Adam had his job and he did the tasks God assigned him. “But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him” (Genesis 2:20 ESV). Adam’s life was not empty and void without Eve. He had his God and he had his work. But God saw that, “It is not good that man should be alone” (2:18). So God created Eve to complete Adam’s world. She was not the sole source of his life and purpose, but without her, God’s plan was not complete.

So we go back to this theoretical moment, with Eve slipping away from Adam to be with God. Adam was suddenly facing life without her once again. Whether he had days left or years, they were to be incomplete or, as God first put it, “not good.” My heart aches for Adam in this situation. I think of my parents and the utter despair I would feel for my father to lose his partner, his helper. The aching is unimaginable.

Yet I must say I prefer this scenario to the alternative. Let us picture, for a moment, a different scene. As a woman who has known true love for a man, this picture is easier for me to imagine. What if Adam died first? What if Eve was left alone? Just thinking of her heartache makes my own heart quiver. I know what it is liked to have loved and lost. I’m in the midst of the grieving process for that loss. But I have a life a part from that love. I’m a bit more like Adam. I have God and I have tasks. I can remember a time before I had love, before I had a partner. And while I would much rather live life with him, I know I am capable of living well without him. Not so for Eve. God created Eve and brought her to Adam. She was created by God, for Adam. She had never existed without him.

But here she is in our mind’s eye, an old woman with wrinkled hands that have held her children and cared for her husband. She has endured the curse by his side for several hundred years and wept at the death of Abel. She gave Adam a son “in his own image” (Genesis 5:3 EV). They alone carried the memory of Eden in their hearts. Yet here he lay, her partner, her mate, the one for whom she was intended. And she was facing the unknown of life, whether days or years, without him. She strokes his hair and keeps him warm while God draws his spirit from the earth.

Forgive me for being overly personal, but I think I have a small understanding of how this might have been for Eve. Losing a relationship, specifically a serious, long term, romantic relationship is, for women, often a huge loss. It is a loss not of the relationship in the present, but also of the hopes and plans for the future. When a relationship ends, the potential future for that relationship ends as well. The children with her hair and his eyes cease to exist. The Christmases spent going between in-laws disappear. The image of him at the end of the aisle, waiting for her, must be extinguished. It is the loss of the future that women often find the most difficult to overcome.

Eve was facing the same loss at Adam’s death. Their time together was coming to an end and she was losing not just him, but the continuing future with him as well. She was losing her leader, her broad shoulder to cry on, and the father of her children. And she was entering into a life, no matter how long she has left, without him. My heart breaks for Eve. It aches for them both but it truly breaks for her.

I’ve gotten a taste of her possible pain over the last few weeks. This level of loss is unimaginable, and it does not hit all at once. It’s a process of realization and of mourning each significant aspect of the relationship that has suddenly ceased to exist. Knowing all of this now, and more importantly, feeling it now, I have just one genuine hope. I doubt I will ever know the reality, but I still have this hope: I desperately hope that God took Eve first. I do not think I could process the concept of Adam dying first. The loss of Adam to Eve would, I think break any woman. But for Eve, who had never known a moment with Adam, I think it would be too much. So I simply hope to God that she never experienced that—I hope beyond all hope that God took her first. 

the discovery of food [in a new way]

So while school is ruling both the content and form of my days, I have had some time to slowly stretch my proverbial cooking wings. I have yet to create a true miracle, but nothing has wound up burnt or inedible...yet.

Here's a glimpse of what has been filling my plate the last month or so <3

Toasted turkey-bacon sandwich with provolone and swiss on fantastic Italian bread from Salad Night. With fresh strawberries, of course.

Family dinner when Em and I both needed it. Pork Roast in the crock pot, baked beans, and broccoli.

My wonderful, last minute meal idea! Orange chicken in the crock pot--we actually had all the ingredients! Served with brown rice and peas.

Wonderful recipe from the lovely Lindsay. Had to get most of the ingredients, but our stuffed chicken breasts were well worth it. 

As it baked, the wonderful smell wafted through our little place <3

Today's creation, courtesy of the leftover ingredients from the previous evening's chicken. Grilled quesadilla with spinach, grape tomatoes, and chicken.

Quite scrumptious. 

On the menu for the coming week: Mother's Stir Fry, Creamy Tortellini Soup (in the crock pot!), and Chicken Lasagna Rolls. 

I'm also considering adding afternoon tea to our daily meal menu. I think hot tea to get you through the rest of the day is a perfectly British idea ; )

haunting my heart...

cri-sis (n)

1

a : the turning point for better or worse in an acute disease or feverb : a paroxysmal attack of pain, distress, or disordered functionc : an emotionally significant event or radical change of status in a person's life <a midlife crisis>

2

: the decisive moment (as in a literary plot)

3

a : an unstable or crucial time or state of affairs in which a decisive change is impending; especially : one with the distinct possibility of a highly undesirable outcome <a financial crisis>b : a situation that has reached a critical phase <the environmental crisis>t


turn-ing point

: a point at which a significant change occurs


brink

1

: edge; especially : the edge at the top of a steep place

2

: a bank especially of a river

3

: the point of onset : verge <on the brink of war>

4

: the threshold of danger

Mud on our Shelves

I just changed my desktop background to a photo of the library at Queen's College, Oxford so I would feel smarter.

Sometimes I wish I could just take hours and wander around a place like this...

I also wish I could soak up all the knowledge by just being there.

Alas, tis not to be.

I'm spending my evening with these lovely chaps tonight.

        

 

We prize and praise so highly the works of those who have gone before. Yet what I have found most interesting about Mr. Arnold's arguments is that he believes the best literature of mankind, the work that even the least educated among us could recognize--The Iliad, Romeo and Juliet, Pride and Prejudice, to name a few-- was always produced during a certain atmosphere of emotion, which then caused the writers to feel more deeply and so write in a way that caused others to do the same.

Makes me think that maybe the vast majority of what is published today is probably a load of crap in comparison. After all, I think we live in a fairly tame and dull climate when compared to the establishment of the Greek society, the Renaissance, the rise of Modernism, and so on. Nothing is true today, say the postmodernists, so then everything must be correct. And no one says, "No, you suck. Don't be a writer. Be a plumber. You are not a good thinker and you should not think of yourself as good at this art that is literature." Yet I walk into a book store and barely glance at what fills the front half. The good stuff is on the lower shelves, towards the back, marked down to seven and eight dollars. Yet you have to pay at least twenty for the biography of some girl who lived in the Playboy mansion and apparently has a story to tell, even though she has yet to reach 30.

i always will...

I'm struck today with how dangerous a thing love can be. "Every rose has its thorns," as we learned Monday night on Bachelor Pad, but, in all seriousness, it's quite true. One of the most dangerous, vulnerable things you can do is fall in love. Even worse, you can commit your life to that person. A person who will never be perfect, never bring you total satisfaction, and who will never be everything you really want him to be. Yet we rush headlong into love anyway. Love is an intoxicating thing. At times my heart feels so full of love for my man, that it could burst. And other times that love causes me to bury my face in my pillow and cry. It's a powerful, dangerous, intoxicating thing. I doubt I'll ever understand it. But I will continue to choose it. I choose Luke, and the joy and heartache that he brings into my life. I know I do the same to his.

My wonderful sister introduced me to a couple of singer/songwriters who put this oxymoronical truth about love into words.