Seeing our Bodies - Part 3 Naked and Unashamed

Seeing our Bodies

Part 3 – Naked and without shame in a Very Good Creation

 

{An image of Adam and Eve should go here, but they all looked so European;

And how can two Europeans work as an image expressing the origin of all humanity?}

 

            I had it all figured out what I would say about Adam and Eve, freshly created, aware of creation, of one another, of God, being both naked and unashamed.  I had it all figured out but then I realized all I was doing with what I had thought to say was to write what would amount to being a remake of a common Protestant script about how man was flawless and then fell into sin, and so we lost that original state.  I decided I shouldn’t try to rewrite “Paradise Lost” in a blog.  If you wish to read “Paradise Lost” don’t bother with a blog, let Milton speak to you in his originality.  Then this morning I saw an article someone posted on Facebook describing the beauty of “story.”  Jennifer Percy described in this Atlantic Monthly article how she switched her university major from Physics to Literature because she began to see literature as a more satisfying way to approach and consider life’s complexities.  A narrative, because it tries to express human life captures a scene where the complexities of human life and human characters are caught up in a moment.  The scene that is framed is complex because human life can be understood in many ways looking on a single expression of human life.  Milton and Protestantism have captured a relevant perspective concerning the story of Adam and Eve, but there is more to the story.  There is always more to a human story.

            I gradually remembered I was drawn to write about Adam and Eve’s ways of looking at themselves because of a heart wrenching letter written by a thirteen year old girl.  I am Protestant enough to acknowledge that even thirteen year old girls have sinned in some way or another.  But to try to immerse a thirteen year old girl’s perception of herself as “fat and ugly” into a Protestant explanation of sin seems forced and extremely inhumane.

            So I wondered how I should write about Adam and Eve perceiving their naked bodies and remaining gloriously unashamed.  Yes, part of the story is that they had not sinned, nor had sin yet entered their world, this world which God described as “very good.”  I have come to believe that God wants us to see and feel more in this scene than to walk away saying “damn it, we lost it all back then.”  This story is too much of a human story for that, expressing the complexity of a humanity that has been devastatingly damaged by participation in sin, but to see only that is to miss that even fallen we have been created even in our own imperfection to show forth something of the sense of the image of God.  Surely even in imperfect human beings there remains a sense within our souls of an understanding of what it means to be naked and unashamed.

            So I take another look at the story of our ancestors, of Adam and Eve; and I am sure if I understand the Scriptures that their story is more than just their story, but also my story and your story.  I see the context in which Adam and Eve are living as they are naked and not ashamed.  They are surrounded by a beautiful creation, a very good creation.  Adam has awakened to see the woman created for him and sees her as beautiful and is moved to combine intellect, physical desire, spirit and soul to speak poetry to his mate.  Together they are to explore this universe.  The Lord at this time we are told later would walk in the garden and pay them visits and it is in this world they found themselves.  I think of a thought expressed by C.S. Lewis.  I am not sure but think it was in Surprised by Joy.  He describes seeing a brilliant sunset over a lake or a sea.  The sight captivates him.  Later he remembers this wonderful feeling he had as he gazed upon the sunset.  He tries to later regain that feeling by trying to capture a sunset at just the right moment.  But slowly he realizes that he can never manufacture again that same sense of the beauty and grandeur he had seen in the sunset.  He concludes that the feeling was not a feeling to be chased, but was merely a symptom of being drawn outside of himself into communion with the glory and beauty of the sunset.  Lewis realizes that we were meant for communion with creation, with one another, with God.  What makes us most happy is not the feeling we experience but the communion that for a moment allows us to be lost wholly and completely in something other than ourselves.  It is in such a time that nothing seems to separate us from what we are enjoying.  It is at such a time that perhaps we are closest to experiencing what it is to be naked and not ashamed.

            I wonder if the meaning of redemption isn’t something like a refocusing of a person from a poor way of being lost to the best way of being lost.  We can be lost in ourselves, separated from everything; doubtful if there is meaning in this universe.  Or we can be lost to the world of creation, to our brothers and sisters within humanity, and to the God who has created us and placed us in a universe in which he has created all things to express his glory, so that we in enjoying all things might enjoy him.

            That makes me think of a thirteen year old girl who wrote the sad report of how she saw herself as fat and ugly.  She probably did when in a melancholy moment she wrote a letter to her future self that would be living ten years in the future.  But if you had seen that same thirteen year old girl in a different setting, I think you may have seen a different view of the same girl.  What if instead of seeing her through a morose letter, you saw her aboard a wild roller coaster with her best friend forever?  Would she have been thinking of how she was fat and ugly?  What if she were mounting a strong horse, taking hold of the reins in her fingers, sensing that this horse was about to be a partner in an adventure?  With a slight tap of a heel to the horse’s side the horse would know it was his turn to fly, to go at a powerful gallop across a field.  She would sit in ecstasy as a breeze from the speed of the steed would wrap about her cheeks.  She would hear the pounding of hooves into the ground as if they were always falling somewhere just behind horse and rider.  They would fly forward to where and when no one cared to know.  Maybe she would not have thought of herself as naked and unashamed.  But I wonder if Adam and Eve were watching her story they might have said, “She knows what it is like.”  I am sure in such a moment the thirteen year old girl would not be giving the least thought to her looks, as far as that was concerned she might as well be naked and not ashamed.  I am sure we will know this feeling more in depth when our lives are unaccompanied by sin.  But I am sure we are meant to partake of at least a taste of this before we reach that day.  As for Adam and Eve we know that they were naked and were not ashamed.