Eden in Exile
near-death experiences, terrible gardening, and a God who likes surprises
Hello Flockecitas (and any FlockecitOs out there)!
I greet you from three days into the school year, where we have endured getting through school despite the beach-worthy temps outside. But then we experienced a massive temperature drop Friday because Minnesota is a fickle mistress, and I was forced to put on socks. We are just at the cusp of Why-Do-We-Live-Here Season.
Today’s essay is something I’ve been thinking about all summer long. We’re talking near-death-experiences, terrible gardening, and God in unexpected places. Let’s giddy-up! (Is there a shepherding equivalent to giddy-up?)
In the Netflix documentary Surviving Death, several people who had been declared clinically dead for anywhere from 1-33 minutes were interviewed about their near-death experiences (episode 1). While there was some variation in their stories, one consistency was woven into several of their accounts: unexpainable color. They grasped at words, talking about how all of their senses were wildly expanded, while they tried to convey this experience to the interviewer’s earthly ears. The first woman interviewed described a pathway surrounded by flowers that was “exploding with every color of the universe.” Another interviewee spoke of being wrapped in color so that he felt completely integrated into it. In the years after his near-death experience, he began painting for the first time in his life in an attempt to capture how this other-wordly color had made him feel.
This is how I imagine Eden: color and beauty that we could not even begin to describe if we saw it, which is what makes Adam and Eve’s departure all the more tragic.
While I do not believe that the Eden narrative is necessarily literal, the image of Adam and Eve, glumly exiting the garden, their minds desperate to retain the flourishing colors and scents and abundance of the garden, is sobering. As Adam and Eve crossed the threshold of paradise into the now-fallen world, as they walked past the fierce angels and flaming sword set up to bar their re-entry lest they live out death forever, they stepped over a boundary that I imagine looks something like my neighbor’s garden next to mine.
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My neighbor Cece is in her seventies, has dreadlocks stretching all the way down her back, and is the best gardener I’ve ever met. She grows a stunning variety of flowers and uses the petals and leaves to make homemade dyes; I admire her home-grown-indigo-dyed silks drying in the sun all summer long. In the back of her house is a literal produce aisle of plants - hot peppers and tomatillos and tomatoes and greens and squashes — a veritable cornucopia that she puts up all September long. Her garden is spotless, in an overflowingly abundant, jungle sort of way. After decades of her war on weeds, she has mostly won by painstakingly watering each plant by hand with a pitcher so as to dry out any surrounding weeds. Her garden is the picture of color and abundance and careful attention.
Sharing a fence that is covered with her climbing vines of mini-cucumbers and squash, is my garden, which next to hers looks more like an ATTEMPT than anything else. Due mostly to the hours of sunlight it gets, I have managed to grow tomatoes, herbs, and green beans. And weeds. A prolific amount of weeds. This year, in particular, after tilling up the soil, adding compost, and planting, we all got covid, so by the time I emerged from my bed a month later, the weeds had stopped just short of an entire takeover.
I imagine the first steps Adam and Eve took into their new home looked a bit like my overgrown garden…unkempt, tangled, disorderly, and a little abandoned.
The Bible describes this cursed place as covered with bushes, thistles, and thorns, without even a mention of a ripe mango. No more plump berries, ready for the picking, no more sunflowers to remind them to be of good cheer. Just Thorns. Thistles. Brambles. The types of plant cousins that leave your shins scratched and stinging while walking in the deep woods. This difficult land filled with thistles, thorns, and unfruitful bushes was the evidence of the curse.
The contrast must have been jarring. Depressing. To go from abundance to scarcity just like that. To leave the place where they had met God and walked in the breezy evenings for a place that must have seemed barren and distant.
Yet, fast forward from that fateful exit to a story of a similar barrenness and distance. Later in the story, we learn that the Israelites are crying out to God as loudly as their slain ancestor Abel’s blood had so many years before (Genesis 4:10). They were in a distant land - Egypt - and their very pulse screamed scarcity as they lived out their days as overworked slaves whose babies were being killed in the worst kind of genocide.
Moses enters this scene and ends up in an even further exile after trying to stand up for his people by harnessing the power of Cain, the power of death, when he kills a cruel Egyptian slave master in retaliation for brutality. In an attempt to save his own life, Moses runs from Egypt, the only home he’s known, and finds himself in exile in Horeb. But even there, in this exile, Eden finds him. He finds a wife, and a home, and what’s more, he finds God again.
But the face of God is not found where he might have expected it. He does not find God in a sparkling spring emerging from the ground, or in the life-giving rain clouds billowing in the sky, or even in a flowering tree of life.
Instead, Moses found God in a bush. A bramble. A thorny thistle.
God surprises Moses by embodying that flame of the flaming sword, this time engulfing but not consuming the very type of plant that humans were cursed to wrestle with after the fall. Moses finds God and holy ground around a weed, a useless plant that he most likely would have considered a nuisance.
He finds the face of God in the curse.
I was so struck when I read this again recently, and I began to wonder where else God shows up in places that we are perhaps not only not expecting but are actively resisting. Maybe it is in the child who seems hell-bent on sending you to your early grave with his bad attitude that only worsens as the day goes on. Maybe there are glimpses of God in your distant spouse or that one neighbor whose music is always a little too loud a little too late into the night. Maybe it’s in the toddler who won’t stop whining. Maybe God’s voice can be heard in the lover who left you, the father who rejected you, the friend who ghosted you.
Our brains are wired to seek and savor the familiar; it’s what makes babies reach for their mamas from a young age and might explain why on a bad day, I will always reach for a bag of cool ranch Doritos.
But we serve a God who is limitless, and I believe we inhibit ourselves when we are blind to anything but the familiar pathways we’ve walked with God on.
Maybe sometimes God shows up in the most unlikely places, ready with a name and a plan to save us, ready to equip us for what lies ahead by his very presence with us.
Maybe there is abundance to be found in scarcity, God’s voice to be heard in the howling wind, an Eden in every exile.
May we look for it.
And may we behold it when we find it.
May we be changed even in the search.
Where has God surprised you lately? What has been your
experience of being open to finding God in unexpected places?
What I’ve Loved Lately:
*READ - Ross Gay’s The Book of Delights is just that — delightful. If you are looking for a gentle kick in the pants towards more gratitude and mindfulness and presence, reading this series of short essays will do just that. (Bonus! I think I may listen to this recording by him each day this year. It will transport you.)
*EAT - While not shifting into soup mode just yet, this recipe for Walnut-Crusted Chicken (with honey and brie) by Half-Baked Harvest was easy and felt just a little like fall and was a hit (I left melted brie off a few pieces for the kids., and they liked it too…like more refined chicken strips…I also used almonds, dried thyme in the coating, and took it easy on the cayenne.)
*LISTEN - Did you also grow up in a Christian home in which no “secular” music was allowed apart from Oldies and everything James Taylor ever wrote? If so, you may love the soundtrack to the Elvis soundtrack. I haven’t seen it, but I love a good sample, and this album (especially songs Vegas and The King & I) is full of throwbacks to seventh grade in the car with my mom added to a dash of hiphop.
*PLAY - You’ve heard of Wordle, but have you heard of its more addicting sister Mordle? You can play Wordle - AGAINST OTHER PEOPLE! It scratches every competitive, grammar-nerd itch I’ve ever had. (Pro-tip: play on your computer so you can type faster!)
*WATCH - I will shout it from the rooftops: WATCH TRYING ON APPLE TV!! Fans of Ted Lasso will love this charming story of a couple walking through the adoption process. It is real and sweet, and I cannot wait for season 4.
Some laughs as we start the school year:
(In place of “Words I’ve Written Lately” because while I’ve written lots of words lately, they are all trapped in 4 different works-in-process that refuse to finish themselves while I sleep. So here are some things that made me chuckle which is just the antidote to my school-is-coming anxiety.)
I’d love to know what’s making you laugh this week. Share the comedic treasure trove of the internet in the comments. Here’s to laughing so we don’t cry when we have to drag our beloved littles out of bed to start school.
I loved this, Elizabeth. This line specifically: I began to wonder where else God shows up in places that we are perhaps not only not expecting but are actively resisting.