I am Eve

 Having spent considerable time looking under the hood of an extremely dysfunctional extended family,the dysfunction including incest alongside fundamentalist churching,I've come to wonder about the nature and origin of evil. That includes ponderings of the original Fall. You know, the Story of Adam and Eve from the Book of Genesis in the Old Testament, pick-your-version.

Last Sunday, I peeked in on services at First Reformed Church in Oak Harbor. I hop around churches a bit. I'm not a joiner, but a sampler.  Coincidental to my latest interest, the sermon was on the subject of the Fall. The pastor told of the Creation, the making of Adam and Eve, Paradise, and the temptation of Eve by the Serpent.

Eve took the bait, made Adam take it too, and when confronted by God, blamed the whole mistake on the snake. And as we all know, God threw everybody out of the garden, condemned the snake to crawl on his belly in the dust, and that was the beginning of sin and the loosing of evil upon the land.

Or something else. How about Free Will? What evil act does not come out of a choice, of free will? I saw this on website owned by a therapist who works with sex offenders (I wish I could find it again, I'd cite it): The offender asks the psychiatrist why he offends. The psychiatrist replies something like this: "You do that because you want to. You thought you would try it once and see if it felt good, and it did, so you did it again. You had no consideration for the child whose body you took control over. You are evil."

The church was built to keep man in touch with God, and through fellowship and teaching, keep evil from taking over altogether. Churches, like other institutions, have a leadership structure. To simplify, I'll call it a shepherd and a flock.

What is the shepherd's responsibility? Certainly to keep the flock from wandering off and also to maintain the health and well-being of each individual. In his human flock, the pastor leads his congregation spirtually, chosing the doctrine and delivering the teachings.

The less dissension and more cohesiveness the easier the job. "Discipleship," coupled with evangelism fills the bill in some churches. Campus Crusade for Christ is the best example I can think of, and it also happens to associate with many churches using this programming. (Now that I've looked at their website, they don't talk about discipling out in the open. But Bill Bright, the founder of CCC, created the model in the 1950s. In this model, disciplers program disciples, who when finished become disciplers, "evangelize" to find new disciples, and in this way build churches. It is not for the new convert to discover until he's been prepared for it. Since the website reaches out to new converts, I can see why the model is not explained there.)

In Christianity, disciples were the students of Jesus during his ministry. In Campus Crusade for Christ, and churches structured in this way,disciples are the followers of organization leaders. There is more than a subtle difference between discipling the son of God and discipling a human being. Certainly there is room for error! Classic power abuses bring about such things as isolation (from "non-believers," including family), humiliation, and financial fraud, borne of human arrogance.

Man-made disciplers in some of these churches take unquestionable authority over their parishioners. A member would make no decision in his personal life without the approval of the discipler. He gives full confession in front of full congregations to create intimacy with the group. "He hears such words as obey, submit, die to self, and brokeness." (Mary Alice Chrnalogar). Is this a well-intentioned attempt at throwing off free will in order to get back into the Garden? Whose Garden?

It's virtual enslavement and absence of privacy. By giving up free will, and the critical thinking that goes with that, how can a person navigate moral waters on his own? "Animal nature" does not go away, it learns to hide. And evil crawls around on it's belly in the dark places where light cannot penetrate. In darkness, it keeps secrets.

Free will expresses man's dual nature of evil and good. Yes, free will is indeed an instrument of pure misery, but it is also an instrument of the most profound love.

I am Eve, and I will not live inside man's Garden. I'm outside, and I'm looking into the eyes of the child victim. It is my free will, and I decide to take his hand and say to him, "There are no walls here in the bright sunlight, and you are free. I can love you and accept you. I'll stand by you while you get your balance and your footing, then learn to walk without chains."

(I want to note that not all church organizations are so dangerous. Most respect the individual, and members work as equals to build healthy community.)

Dixie Cups - Iko Iko (Rare clip)

Iko Iko

I've been thinking about blind prejudice lately, ever since I got that email about the 9/11 False Flag Conspiracy. That looks to me like almost-pure antisemitism, which dates all the way back to the Crucifiction of Christ. It's been a constant in world history, and you can find excellent articles on this on Wikipedia. I won't try to reconstruct it here.

When I was a child in the early 1960s, I lived in a small town called Livermore in Calfornia. My father was a small businessman there, but we lived on the same street with scientists and mathematicians employed at Lawrence Livermore Labs, known then as Lawrence Radiation Laboratories. "Where they build the bomb," as locals liked to say. These brilliant people came from all walks of life, so our neighbors were Jewish, and also Japanese, Chinese, and any domestic blend you can imagine.

Equality of races and religions wasn't exactly instructed, it was exemplified. For instance, there was no Christmas tree at my friend, Craig Goishi's house. I may have thought that was puzzling, but there wasn't one at Angelica Hemple's house, either. Hemples had a big candelabra instead, and they called it a Menorah. These things weren't pointed out and compared, they just were.

I heard my parents talk about the camp that Craig's parents were kept in before he was born because that's where his parents met. They compared the stories Watt and Minnie told with the stories they'd heard of the concentration camps of Germany. I was too young to understand the cruelty, and could not process it.

My parents' folks lived in Vallejo, a Navy town about an hour from Livermore. There were many black families there, along with Filipinos and the usual American mix. My cousins and I played alongside all of them at the city parks.

Grandma's famous neighbor

I was thinking of this today because it was so easy then, as a child, to play together. We could see the differences in each other, but we'd shrug our shoulders and get down to the business of sharing a swing set, whoever was next on the swing would push the kid who had the swing. It was understood.

And I was just remembering the four little Filipina girls who lived in a basement apartment across the street from my grandma. They were hitting sticks together and pounding fists on the sidewalk singing, "Iko Iko." I knew the song was on the radio those days, sung by the Dixie Cups, and I thought that must be a Filipino folk song after that.

It's not. Today I looked it up on Wikipedia. It's a Mardi Gras song and it's got a smattering of West African rhythms and Carribean dialects in it, along with other influences no one can really identify. It dates back to the mid 50's, performed in the French Quarter of New Orleans by Mardi Gras Indians. The song is about competition between these tribes; their music, their dress, and their popularity among the revelers.  Mardi Gras Indian tribes? How come they look like black men? Again, Wikipedia has a great article on how this can be.

"The tradition was said to have originated from an affinity between Africans and Indians as minorities within the dominant culture, and blacks' circumventing some of the worst racial segregation laws by representing themselves as Indians."



Big Chief Monk Bordreaux, of the Golden Eagles

 That's how today's musings come full-circle. Here and now. Today is Mardi Gras! Serendipity leads again, such timing! Just as the taking in stride as children can, as they meet their playmates if allowed to do so.