Days of Awe and Wonder: How to Be a Christian in the Twenty-first Century

by Marcus J. Borg

This is one of the central meanings of the Garden of Eden story, one of the central meanings of the Fall. The Fall isn’t really about disobedience, though it’s there in the story. The Fall is much more about the fact that we begin our lives, each of us individually, with a sense of undifferentiated union with what is. We begin our lives in paradise. But the birth of the separated self suddenly means we live our lives “east of Eden” in a state of separation and estrangement. Let me use the best story I know for making this point, which I’m told is in one of the books of Parker Palmer. It’s a story about a three-year-old girl who was the only child in her family. But now her mom is pregnant, and this three-year-old girl is very excited about having a baby in the house. The day comes when the mother-to-be is to deliver, and the mom and dad go off to the hospital. A couple of days later they come home with a new baby brother, and the little girl is just delighted. After they’ve been home for a couple of hours, the little girl tells her parents that she wants to be with the baby in the baby’s room, alone, with the door shut. She’s absolutely insistent about the door being shut. Her folks find this unsettling. They know she’s a good little girl, but they’ve also heard about sibling rivalry and all. Then they remember that they’ve recently installed an intercom system in preparation for the arrival of the new baby. They realize that they can let their little girl do this, and if ...