Sunday
The Fall is not simply something that happened to Adam and Eve in one historical moment. It’s something that happens in all moments and all lives.
—Richard Rohr
Monday
By eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, Adam’s and Eve’s eyes were opened to a split universe of suspicion and doubt.
—Richard Rohr
Tuesday
In the story of the Fall I see our propensity to mistake freedom for individuality. I see us estranged from our bodies, hiding the very aspects of ourselves that make us different than one another.
—Brian Bantum
Wednesday
The way back to Eden, the space between “paradise lost” and “paradise regained,” the place where we live our lives, can be one of great love and great suffering, of newfound humility and awe.
—Ruth Patterson
Thursday
The nostalgia for what has been lost remains long after childhood and can impel seekers to search both within themselves and out in the world for this lost place, time and state of mind.
—Fiona Gardner
Friday
We all walk in the garden whether we know it or not. We came from God and we will return to God. Everything in between is a school of conscious loving.
—Richard Rohr
Week Six Practice
The Point of Our Being
Author and poet Mary Jo Leddy offers this poem, reminding us that God is our point of origin for all creation.
You are the Point
of all Being.
Every tree stretches
up to You.
Each plant reaches
down to You.
All the roads go
on to You.
The many waters run
toward the vastness
of Your love.
The air breathes
in and unto You.
Every heart wants
to turn to You.
How unhappy we are
when we miss
the Point of all Being.
How blessed are we
when we follow our longing
and leaning into
Your direction.
Reference:
Mary Jo Leddy, Radical Gratitude (Orbis Books, 2002), 104. Used with permission.
Image credit and inspiration: Abishek Rana, untitled (detail), 2020, photo, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. A serpent in a garden invites us to pause. We are reminded that maturing means discerning between venom and challenge. Can we step from innocence into experience—while being held in intimate relationship with God?
