... Who saw our nakedness and that we tried to hide it. What better punishment then, than to make hiding ourselves the judgment? Ordained to cover by Providential bias, we were given our skin, ourselves to hide — so ordered, and so we did.
And discovered secrets.
Exiled
...and beneath these secrets found, under the brairs and the snags and the brambles, a road thru wilderness and all the worlds of woe that followed. How else, tho? Without secrets and the cringe of discovery, then whereof shame, and walls, and defense, of shields and pretense, of the need for arms and a will to harm?
Imprison the spirit-transparent, flesh it over and smear it with sin, and still there is that spirit beneath. But if not for nakedness, then what else was there to shame us, and what to mold and shape us? What but the sin of skin to better frame us, and make us fall back on the protection of lies?
Underpinning fears and the sins of history, all our schemes and science, all the arts of mystery and imagination, all this we learned from concealment. Secrecy feeding shame feeding lies and separation, souls divided from spirit rub and multiply together, warping the compass, giving newly mortal instincts every reason to lie.
And we did.
But how else should we learn, and how else train for eternity? Of what use was our innocence against the gain and needs of wisdom? What is our inheritance after all, but our curiosity, our mind and mortality against the itch, itch, itch of that mystery?
What can we know of purpose, or of eternity for that matter, except to seek beyond forbidden, to peek behind the curtain, and to reach for a reaching God?
We are more than abandoned orphans. Under the rules of separation, we were driven from the Garden; disgraced, but as heirs and children; evicted but protected as pilgrims under pilot. Exiled to find our wisdom, driven and destined, we were born to die and relearn creation on our epic journey home.
~
