[Soil & Land - III]
The fertile land of the Garden of Eden tells us a lot about healthy spirituality—sin not included.
Eden is a place of harmony and flourishing. Many of us may have never experienced anything that resembles such an existence, but within us is the capacity to imagine such a thing. Imagination is not evidence of fantasy; quite the opposite. Imagination is the water table beneath the well of possibility. Most of us simply never attempt to dig down far enough to tap into it. Eden, then, is not so much a place but a symbol that captures the possibility of our hopes.
Eden is also from where humans were exiled. “You must leave,” Adam and Eve were told by God after their transgression. So, while it was a place of harmony at first, it was a place of deep hurt in the end. Life at first; death in the end. Peace at first; conflict in the end. And the shift was marked by a severance, a break-up, a broken relationship—from the land, from God, from harmony. Eden, then, is not so much a place but a pattern of human existence. What begins in the harmony of the womb, the ecstasy of love and belonging, eventually breaks.
Life always includes, if we’re honest, failure, trauma, pain, and grief. But under it all is a current of hope.
