In The Cool of the Evening

There are so many ways I have failed. When I look at my errors, at my sin, I despair.

I see the part I had in my failed marriage. I was less than I should have been.

I see how I have failed as a parent. I failed to see all their needs and focused on things of lesser importance.

I see my weaknesses of character. I fall so short of what I long to be.

When I look at the mighty hearts of others, especially of Christ, I feel I have squandered much.

I know everyone else has failures too. For me, the glowing crimson moments in my life when I chose selfishly do not shine any less brightly because they fade into the overall greyness of a mighty universe filled with innumerable spirits who choose exactly as I.

I think Adam doesn’t get enough respect.

We look at the first couple, the parents of us all, and glower at their first sin, feeling it is their fault we don’t experience a perfect life.

I think if I spent a day walking around with Adam, the first man, I would be astonished at who he is.

He spent a lot of time alone.

He got to be closer to God than other men, perhaps a daily event.

But he spent most of his days working alone. That must have shaped his mind and heart.

I imagine he did a lot of walking.

I imagine him walking valleys of the world, finding his way over mountain passes and finding new worlds... deserts, jungles, infant valleys born of retreating glaciers.

I bet he was quiet.

He wouldn’t spend his time talking about the trivial things we talk about... gossip about the famous, speculations of what fictional events might happen in television shows, the price of coffee.

I think if he did talk, it was the sort of words, songs really, about what he saw, where he was, the wonder of the natural world.

I think he moaned a little at night, watching the gliding moon...

But I think he worked hard at what he did... He explored, and he gave names to all the things he saw. And, in the evenings, a great intensity of otherness would walk beside him, and they would share themselves with each other.

(What a strange wonder it must have been for God Himself to have a being He could talk with, who was perfectly free to reject Him!)

So... I don’t think Adam’s sin was all that bad. Not compared to mine. I haven’t any reason to point the blame of my failures on him.

Adam was given a mate. Someone he could talk to everyday, all day long. There wouldn’t be that intensity of The Presence of God.

I really understand Adam’s wish to do whatever Eve wanted.

First, she’s, well... a woman. Someone like me, but completely different. Different physically, different mentally, different emotionally.

There’s a need to share. Adam was a hermit for such a long time... with the exception of the intense sharing each evening.

Now he had someone to talk to. And not just about the strange creature he noticed under a rock, or the startling taste of a berry he had tried... but about other things, very simple things... Perhaps about the changing temperature, or what they could see in the shape of clouds, or how a tree bole looked like a face, or why some stars shift around the sky.

After being alone for so long, I would do anything Eve asked me to do. I’d be happy to listen to her, to agree with her, to do for her.

Eve may have taken that first bite, but I bet Adam’s was bigger. Mine would have been.

It’s strange I feel guilty. I know He doesn’t want me hanging onto my failures. I know He regrets the consequences coming from free will, but He’s enjoying us immensely. It must please Him to see so many of us struggling to be what He wants us to be, that He might get to know in the cool of the evening... someday.

Still... that is how I feel. Guilt. Shame.

Mostly for stuff that isn’t important.

Why do I feel guilty about the death of Willy? It was natural causes. It wasn’t my fault. But still, something shouts from deep in my heart that I WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR HIS CARE!

Why do I feel guilty because my marriage had failed? I made many mistakes. She certainly did...

And this isn’t the sort of the thing the I Am is interested in talking about. It’s isn’t a good thing, wasn’t done for good reasons, wasn’t good for others, and it isn’t good because it doesn’t feels like it. It’s messy.

It’s like I have taken the trash out, and once I got to the curb where I could leave it, I stood there for a minute watching for the garbage truck, and as I left to go to work, I dragged the garbage with me.

This morbid little exercise this afternoon, this wandering post through guilt and sin, is partly born of other things, I know... It’s born of anxieties about my children, of work, of learning to be both parents, depression, and a huge sleep deficit.

The last few nights has been different than the last two years. I have gotten seven or more hours of sleep each night for the last four nights. About double of what has become normal for me.

There is much more time set aside for my mind and body to rest, but also, the doubling of dreams.

Why do I drag the sack of garbage still? Anxiety by day, metaphors of shape and color and smell in my sleep.

I feel best when I set the garbage aside now and then. There have been a couple of nice dreams, simply watching clouds glide past.

I need to set the garbage aside during the day too.

I do that best when I am thinking in such a way as to feel I will one day walk in the cool of the evening.