What if…
June 29, 2011, 8:37 pm
Posted by Joseph A. Komonchak
One of my sisters sent me today this intriguing poem by Linda Pastan, “On the Question of Free Will”:
Sometimes,
noticing the skeleton
embossed
on every leaf
and how the lion’s mouth
and antelope’s neck
fit perfectly
I wonder
at God’s plan
had Eve refused
the apple.
Exactly!
Would it have made more sense if Eve went for Adam’s jugular? Eve, in today’s woman, is getting back at the author of genesis. Certainly, Tertullian should have shut his mouth about it. Truth is more in Paul’s words: “Who has known the mind of God and who has been his counselor?” What else can one do before the living God but plead for mercy. Yet Jesus has made the approach attractive—and redemptive. …..But we really should stop blaming Eve for humanities ills.
Is that the same Paul who wrote: “the serpent seduced Eve by his cunning”? Both the Apostle and the poet were using the story as they found it.
It would seem that St. Paul (to whatever extent he had a concept of the Fall), put the blame on Adam:
I don’t see any way to reinterpret “just as sin entered the world through one man” to include Eve.
An interesting “what if” would be, “What if Eve had eaten the forbidden fruit but Adam had not?”
Here’s my favorite poem explaining why things are the way they are:
Paul also wrote: “Man was not seduced, but woman, having been seduced, was in transgression,” 1 Timoth. 2
The “Fathers” of the church could not agree on who was seduced and Cardinal Bellarmine continues the confusion. http://www.catherinecollegelibrary.net/theology/bellar1.asp
No wonder the fourth century is termed the decline of the faith. Paul does touch on the subject but his agenda was totally in building up the faith not the constant speculation found in the fathers. These guys had a lot of time on their hands.
The Genesis account is true in that wo/man definitely became estranged from God. The elaborate discussion shows the pitfalls of dogma concerning which people were tortured and killed for expressing disagreement.
Paul did not write 1 and 2 Timothy.
You might even deduce from Genesis that marriage corrupts, so avoid it.
The thing about theological interpretations is that we tend to bring our previous beliefs to it automatically. But what’s the alternative? We can’t bring totally fresh minds to it. If we did all we’d find would be marks on a page. No, not even marks and not even a page — just lines and surfaces.
The poem seems to point out that the Fall had an impact, not just on humanity, but on all of creation. That has some intuitive (and poetic) appeal, but it does seem difficult to align with science, e.g. science’s view of why lions’ mouths seem to fit antelopes’ necks so well.
“The thing about theological interpretations is that we tend to bring our previous beliefs to it automatically. But what’s the alternative?”
A revolutionary alternative would be to stop quoting as authorities the fathers and doctors of the church, who clearly brought their previous beliefs to the table. Another revolution is to stay away from questions like who was seduced because all of us were/are “seduced” or estranged from God.
But that dispenses with Revelation of any sort, including all of he NT.
A wonderful and thought-provoking poem. Who is Linda Pastan?
I think the point is that the lion and the antelope are both considerably older than homo sapiens, so the lion’s mouth fit the antelope’s neck (poetically speaking) long before “the Fall” could have taken place. (Or, to take a less scientific approach, in the creation stories, God created all the animals before “the Fall.”) If the lion preys on the antelope as a consequence of “the Fall,” one has to ask for what purpose God so nicely designed the antelope to be the prey of the lion in advance of “the Fall.” And what would be the relationship between the lion and the antelope had “the Fall” not happened?
Had “the Fall” not taken place, could we deduce, from looking at the world around us, that it was designed for the possibility of a “Fall”—one that did not happen?
Might St. Augustine say that God in His omniscience foresaw the Fall (although his doing so in no way detracted from Adam and Eve’s free choice to Fall) and designed the world accordingly?
Felapton,
Or designed an already fallen world (except, perhaps, for the small spot known as Eden) in anticipation of “the Fall,” somewhat as Mary was conceived immaculately not because of what had happened, but because of what would happen?
One read is that the leaf would not have withered and died nor the lion’s mouth fit the antelope’s neck so neatly if God hadn’t already intended things to work out the way they did–with humans rejecting earthly paradise in exchange for knowledge fo good and evil. It strikes me as very Miltonic. We have free will–but God already knows how we’re going to choose. Paradise exists for those God already knows will choose right.
Another take is that God had a plan A–paradise on earth–but created the food chain and cyclical death and rebirth–plan B–depending on what humans chose of their own free will–in order to keep things going. The latter is a more interesting reading, showing that God does not know what we’ll do but has endlessly inventive contingency plans to keep things going, perhaps until we finally get it right. More Blake-ian.
Who knows, though. This poem is like those optical illusion pictures (“Do you see two people kissing or a butterfly?).
Was the sister who sent you the poem the same one who uses lard in her piecrust? How does she read it?
I’m glad we’re back to the poem, which, like all good poems, gives food for thought. I don’t think we can neglect the title the author gave her little piece. Leaves presumably had skeletal ribs before the fall, but did lions pursue antelope? In the restored paradise of the Bible, the lion will lie down with the lamb. Perhaps that was also true before the Fall?
Yes, Jean, it’s the same sister. I’ll ask her for her take on the poem. She found it among the 80 poems in Pastan’s book “The Imperfect Paradise,” a title my sister says comes from a line of Wallace Stevens: “The imperfect is our paradise.”
Complicating the notion that the lion’s devouring the antelope is evidence of the Fall would seem to be the fact that our own limbs also fit quite nicely into a lion’s mouth, or a crocodile’s, quite possibly both before and after the Fall. Is the lion devouring the antelope, or a crocodile devouring one of us, or a whale devouring Jonah, evidence of the world’s intertwining with evil? To the antelope, I don’t doubt the lion problem is the antelopian condition of life which makes them all long for a savior, but to the lion, eating an antelope is probably about as worthy of moral consideration as us eating a salad. Have I just stumbled into the mire of zoological relativism?
Revelation can remain intact with discernment. Theology should not be a free for all.
I read a commentary on Genesis by a Kabbalist who said that it was clearly God’s plan that there should be a “fall”. I won’t go through all of the reasons but the point was that it was necessary that it occur for freedom and choice. Indeed, in the Genesis account God does not curse humanity but explains what life will now be like. And God fashions clothes for them. Clothes is a biblical metaphor for civilization. The meaning is that God created civilization after the fall for our benefit. We sing in the exsultet “O Happy fault – O necessary sin of Adam”. I am not a huge fan of that thought as I tend toward the Franciscan view that the incarnation would have occurred with or without the “fall” because God so loves the world that he wants to experience it in the most intimate way possible.
God must be at least as smart as us as far as psychology is concerned. Watch this experiment by illusionist Derren Brown proving the power of negative suggestion. See what happens when you tell children “Thou shalt not…..” And we think God did not know this??? Oh and watch the twins explanation for the box. Hilarious.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fIuMBDLOAQ&feature=related
George D, wonderful video! Note that the of first two children, a boy and a girl, press the button with their little fingers TOGETHER, bless them.
And, yes, the twins, “a hand came out!” Reminds me of that passive construction often used to abrogate responsibility, “mistakes were made …”
Fr. Komonchak, clearly your sister is a woman of taste and sense! Please do let us know how she sees it. Perhaps some of Pastan’s other poems shed more light.
At the risk of sounding pollyannish (or aristotilean), could it be that the speaker is marvelling at the order of nature–even fallen nature is ordered!–and wondering at it all? And then speculating, if there had been no fall, how much more fitting would it be!
Kathy, I don’t think that’s pollyannish. It’s an interesting interpretation, sort of what I was trying to get at with my notion that, no matter what our choices, God will keep creation going in His endless creativity.
I too like Kathy’s interpretation. Is it of any interest that Linda Pastan is Jewish, and not brought up, then, on Christian views of original sin?
Here’s another poem by her:
To A Daughter Leaving Home
When I taught you
at eight to ride
a bicycle, loping along
beside you
as you wobbled away
on two round wheels,
my own mouth rounding
in surprise when you pulled
ahead down the curved
path of the park,
I kept waiting
for the thud
of your crash as I
sprinted to catch up,
while you grew
smaller, more breakable
with distance,
pumping, pumping
for your life, screaming
with laughter,
the hair flapping
behind you like a
handkerchief waving
goodbye.
And this one is even better than the first two:
Emily Dickinson
We think of hidden in a white dress
among the folded linens and sachets
of well-kept cupboards, or just out of sight
sending jellies and notes with no address
to all the wondering Amherst neighbors.
Eccentric as New England weather
the stiff wind of her mind, stinging or gentle,
blew two half imagined lovers off.
Yet legend won’t explain the sheer sanity
of vision, the serious mischief
of language, the economy of pain.
Linda Pastan
And my sister just sent me this, which is also about Eden:
The Animals
When I see a suckling pig turn
on the spit, its mouth around
an apple, or feel the soft
muzzle of a horse,
eating a windfall from my hand,
I think about the animals
when Eden closed down,
who stole no fruit themselves.
After feeding so long
from Adam’s outstretched hand
and sleeping under the mild stars
flank to flank,
what did they do on freezing nights?
Still ignorant of nests and lairs
did they try to warm themselves
at the fiery leaves of the first autumn?
And how did they learn to sharpen
fangs and claws? Who taught them
the first lesson: that flesh
had been transformed to meat?
Tiger and Bear. Elk and Dove.
God saved them places on the Ark,
and Christ would honor them with
parables, calling himself the Lamb of God.
We train our dogs in strict obedience
at which we failed ourselves.
But sometimes the sound of barking
fills the night like distant artillery.
a sound as chilling as the bellow
of steers lead up the ramps
of cattle cars whose gates swing
shut on them, as Eden’s did.
Here is my sister Bernie’s take on the Pastan poem:
“Well, I can’t compete with all of the theologians. The poet has made choices; she chooses to see the veins of a leaf as a skeleton, not as the arteries that bring life as she could have. Clearly she is focusing on death that is the result of the Fall. In the harmony of Eden the lion would have laid down with the lamb (antelope) had Eve not made her choice. Then there’s the question of God’s plan. Is she implying that Eve taking the apple was or was not God’s plan? She doesn’t say that she wonders what God’s plan was but rather she wonders at God’s plan. Is she playing with the two senses of “wonder”… to question and to be in awe of.
“That’s what we do.. question and wonder. To me the poem doesn’t have an answer. It raises questions. Nobody has mentioned humor but I find the poem humorous because I have never once contemplated options for Eve other than refusing the apple or taking it. Now that Pastan has opened that door, I find it humorous to think of the millions of other ends to the story. That involves creation…ours and God’s.”
Fr. Komonchak, as I suspected, your sister is a woman of taste and sense, and her seeing the word “wonder” as the pivot on which the poem turns is a great way to look at it. I agree there is no answer; it is purposely ambiguous.
Loved this image (to me, anyway) of the tenuous and imperfect order humans try to impose on creation, leaky around the edges, heard in the dogs barking and the cattle’s protestations:
“We train our dogs in strict obedience
at which we failed ourselves.
But sometimes the sound of barking
fills the night like distant artillery.
a sound as chilling as the bellow
of steers lead up the ramps
of cattle cars whose gates swing
shut on them, as Eden’s did.”
“tenuous and imperfect order…leaky around the edges”–this seems very true to me, Jean. It is an order contingent on the strangest factors, such as weather.
I find myself wondering about the dinner table conversations at the Komonchak household when you and Bernie and the others were growing up, Fr. Komonchak. How do minds develop subtlety (perhaps the last lost liberal art)?