2003-07-01 - 1:45 p.m.
Adam stared at his sodden feet for hours before his father finally decided to throw him out of the house. He had not been able to think of anything other than his grievous mistake and its ramifications on him and Father. He would be alone. Father would be alone. Had it been worth it? Had he really considered what the warnings meant? He had been warned. He knew the severity of his actions. And yet he carried through with it. No other action or consequence in his lifetime had been like this and he had nothing else to compare it to. He had no grasp of the actual meaning of what it meant and how it would shape the future. All that he had had was a warning. Was it fair? Was it honest on the part of Father to give him instructions, expect him to follow, and never to know the true predicament it would put him in if he disobeyed? But Father was his maker. Father was the reason for his being. What Father said was "the Word". Wasn't it? How did others do it? Were others defiant? What was the consequence for them when they broke the rules? He had nothing to compare himself to. It seemed that Father loved him more than others were loved, but why was he to get such a harsh punishment? It did not seem fair. Adam had never been outside of the protection of the home that was upkept and protected by his father. Adam had never been alone. Adam was still a child.
Nothing fosters permanent emotional trauma like the feelings of love and hate for the same person. It embodies the very depth of self-deprecation when you must belittle yourself to love that which you hate. It tortures the mind and the body when you must hate the person that you love and cherish as your own. Adam had been expelled, compliantly, and was now figuring out what Father had done. And yet it remained that this punishment, barren, stranded and unguided was to be his burden to bear for the rest of his life. He would never see Father again. The world was before him, ready for his will to subdue it, ready for his body to mould it, ready for his mind and it's new-found freedom to wield it. But he would never see Father again. As exciting and liberating as all of that which lay before him was, he realized that every day, for the rest of his life, he would have to face the fact that he would never have his Father or his home again. Was this liberation or abandonment? Was the punishment worth his mistake? Was this fair, or was there something behind it all? Why should he be expelled? Adam loved Father and had never done anything like this before, and yet Father was so quick to react so harshly. The concept was nerve-racking, but it was not implausible that the reason Father had kicked him out was because Father did not love him. No. No, that was not true. Adam loved Father, and Father had always loved him. What then? What could Father's reasonings have been?
Adam grew old, conquered the world and sired many children. He wielded axes, plowed fields, cultivated crops and loved everyone he knew. And yet his love was always tainted. Adam had been a child whose life was without guidance or definition. What he knew, he had taught himself. His early roots had been laid in firm ground and nourished with love, but unearthed and transplanted too soon. As this was his only experience with life, that is what he taught his children. He gave them love, but not what he knew should be taught. He was not able to pass down the secret of unadulterated love, because he had been deprived of it himself. But he never left their side or expelled them from his life. He gave them what he could and planted the idea in their souls that life is worth living and love is worth giving, even if it was burdened and impaired.
He did not know what it meant. He lived a lifetime of duplicity between practicing and preaching the love and goodness that he knew to be the truth and foundation of the meaning of life, and also the resentment that came with his childhood transgression, the calamity that malformed his life when he was rejected. The most maddening part was not knowing the reasons and having to rack his mind trying to understand why Father had done what he had done. He had spent every day of his life trying to convince himself that what Father had done was for his own good, and out of love for him, and yet it did not make sense. Love meant forgiveness. This was not forgiveness. Father was nowhere to be seen or had again, while Adam was forced to undergo strife and to toil for meaning and subsistent nourishment. The question and the anguish was enough to keep him going, to keep him searching for an answer, to keep him alive.
Minutes before his death Adam no longer doubted the truth that his heart felt to be true. It was simple and yet it took a lifetime to accept. He had been abandoned. Father had abandoned him.
As soon as this was apparent to him, a maelstrom of subdued thoughts came to Adam as subconscious explanations derived over a lifetime. Father had been threatened by him. Father had been hiding resentful thoughts. Father had never wanted him. Father had been evil. Father was not really his Father.
But how? Why? Nothing made any sense anymore. Adam HAD been loved. Adam had been nurtured and cleansed. Adam had been given life! What more than that is necessary to show love? Much more, he realized. Love is acceptance. Love is forgiveness. Love is working through problems. Love is love, pure and simple. Father had stopped loving him. But what about the warning? Hadn't Father warned him about his mistake ahead of time? Wasn't that love? Wasn't that enough? No, he thought. That was not enough. Love is grander than a warning. Love is grander than even Adam could understand. Father was love to Adam. Father had betrayed him. Father had cast him away. Father had stopped loving. Love had betrayed Adam.
Adam knew that he was above all of this. He knew life to be worth more than that. He knew life to be worth more than love of past or love of future. He knew life to be a chance to out-do his father. Life was a chance to show Father that Adam could love better than He. Life was a chance to overcome the tainted mind and the bruised psyche that Adam had endured in his solitary years. Life was the opportunity to teach his children that the point of life is to learn to love fully and wholesomely, everyone and everything, including themselves. Life was Adam's chance to be better than Father. Within the moment it took to realize the enormity of the meaning of these thoughts, Adam died.
---------------------------
"Love alone is capable of uniting living beings in such a way as to complete and fulfill them, for it alone takes them and joins them by what is deepest in themselves."
"Our duty, as men and women, is to proceed as if limits to our ability did not exist. We are collaborators in creation."
"Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire."
-- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
---------------------
"Indeed the Idols I have loved so long,
have done my credit in this World much wrong;
have drowned my Glory in a shallow Cup,
and sold my Reputation for a Song."
----
"Each Morn a thousand Roses brings, you say;
Yes, but where leaves the Rose of Yesterday?"
----
"Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and Saint, and heard great argument
About it and about: but evermore
Came out by the same door wherein I went."
-- Omar Khayyam
�
�
