The Fruits of Harmony: Genesis 2

A story-sermon shared with Madison Mennonite as we entered into this month’s focus on our core value, “Harmony in Diversity.” With special gratitude and credit to North American Indigenous groups and cosmologies, particularly the Lakota, who have influenced my thinking on names for God (“Great Mysterious”) and the naming of other-than-human relations.


In the early days, the one you call “God” walked on the earth. God didn’t have a proper name then, nor, for that matter did my companion or I. Later, we would call God “I am who I am,” the Great Mysterious. But in those first days, we did not need names for we knew one another; we shared breath. We were not one, but we were not separate.

In the early days, the one you call God walked on the earth they had created, like a gardener puttering around their flower beds… They knew every nook and cranny of creation, every volcano and every canyon. They fine-tuned the direction of the four rivers that flowed out of Eden, aligning them just so the waters ran out to meet the Great Light in the morning to the east, and then put it to sleep at night in the west. For good measure and balance, God formed two more rivers, one to the north and one to the south so that the whole earth was never far from the waters of life.

Others tell a story of God speaking down from the high heavens to create all of this, turning the chaos into order; that may be so. The way I remember it, the earth was neat and tidy and then when the creating started, a holy chaos ensued: the trees sprang up from the soil, and then beasts of every kind were shaped out of the same mud as us. The garden went from being a placid, “peaceful” place to a muddy, wild, and beautiful mess.

Two of those trees that sprang up need further mentioning, but can I talk first about the animals?

God and I — or I guess you could say, “we,” for my companion and I were still embodied together at the time — took daily walks in the garden when we were first planted there. We’d walk for a long way toward the east in the morning, along the river, then when the Great Light was partway through the sky, we’d turn around and head back west to the other end of the garden. There was always so much to talk about and to tend along the way. 

One day, as the Great Light was sinking into the west, we sat down for a few moments, and God blurted out, “It’s not good for you to be alone. I will make a fitting companion for you.”

Not good…?! It hadn’t struck us that anything about creation was “not good.” Nor had we ever felt alone; the concept felt foreign; God was ever present with us. These were the days before we knew fear or insecurity…So, we were perplexed. 

But, also, true to our design, we were curious.

While we we sat there, God picked up a handful of the earth, and motioned for me to bring some water from the river. I found a fig tree nearby and after popping a fruit in my mouth, took one of its large leaves, scooped up some water, and brought it before God. They moved quickly, their hands a blur of motion, then they leaned down and breathed, and it lived! 

God gathered up more earth, asked for more water, and soon we were surrounded by a whole host of earth creatures — some with four legs, some with six and eight legs, others with just two legs (some of which seemed to hover in the air), and a few with no legs or arms at all. They were all breathtakingly marvelous! 

Over many days, God kept creating more and more and would try variations of what they already created, until there were so many that I could hardly tell some of them apart.

God rested after a long day of creating and turned to me and grinned. “There must certainly be one among these creations who will be a fitting companion. It will be your task to name them so that you will be able to tell them apart,” God said. 

“Name them?” I asked, confused. “Are they not the same as me? They are made from the same earth, the same waters, and made by the same artist. Why should they have any other name but ‘earth creature’?”

“You speak wisely,” God said. “Indeed, these are your siblings. You have the same creator. You are made of the same essence and materials. Yet, each of these is a little different from you. When I set out to make you a companion, my intent was not to create an earth creature who mimicked or mirrored you completely. I sought to make a fitting companion who will balance you and whom you will balance in return.

And now, you must test these creations to see if they meet that requirement, and in naming them, you will be able to remember which ones may be suitable.” 

“How shall I test them?” I asked.

God paused for a moment, thinking.

“Spend time with each of them. Get to know them. Discover their gifts, their motivations. That will help you discover their name. Then when you know their names, sing with them.”

I listened intently, trying to follow God’s logic.

“So,” I started, hesitatingly, “I shall bring each one apart, discover their name, and then sing with them.”

“Exactly,” God replied. “When you sing with them, you will listen: do your songs match in any way? If so, is it because they are singing the same notes as you? Who simply follows your melody, and who adds depth to your song? In the richness of tones, you will find your companion.” 

I did as God suggested. For many days, the earth was full of singing. There were some who clearly were not the kind of companions God had imagined for me: the one I called Donkey was an early choice to eliminate, along with Elephant, Crow, and Great White Shark (…that one couldn’t hold a tune at all but just sort of eyeballed me). 

There were others who initially had potential—Meadowlark, Hyena, and Cricket—but our harmonies were short-lived. Others tried to convince me that our song was complementary—the one I called House Cat and another I named Husky Dog, and for their efforts and charisma, they were ensured a spot near my nightly resting place. 

But when I had gone through auditioning all my fellow earth creatures, none of them quite matched God’s vision for a companion for me—for us.

I was pleasantly tired after such rigorous work and fell into a deep sleep. When I awoke, I had a strange sense that part of me was missing. I looked across the resting place, past House Cat and Husky Dog, and saw a new earth creature that looked strangely familiar but entirely foreign. God sat at the side and with a sparkle in their eyes, whispered to us, “Sing!”

We did; and though House Cat and Husky Dog gave us the stink eye from their cozy spots, we sang until we ran out of breath and could sing no more. We passed the test; we did not sing the same note, but our notes blended together. Their voice balanced mine, and mine, theirs.

In the stories you tell, my companion speaks first, which is true enough. They said, “This time, this is the one! Bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh! Now she will be woman and I will be man.” I could have said the same thing, for they were bone of my bone, too. And flesh of my flesh. While they were busy verbally processing the revelation, I was composing the next song to sing together. 

I said I would tell you more about the trees, didn’t I?

There were more trees than I could count in the garden, many of which were heavy with fruit, day after day after day.

The favorite tree for us to gather under — God, my companion and I, and all our earth creature friends — was the tree of life. It was where we talked, sang, rested, danced and where we slept most nights. We held a council most evenings, beginning as the Great Light was embraced by the western river and as the Centering Light rose into the darkened sky.

In the very early days, when it was just God and the one-before-we-were-two, God brought us to this tree of life and taught us about it. “You may eat the fruit of this tree; it is among the sweetest in the garden. Remember, as you eat from it, that your lives are interconnected. You are made of the same earth as this tree. Its roots, which you nourish with compost, support the ground you rely on. Its branches, which you prune to keep it heathy, shield you in the rains. It breathes in what you breathe out, and breathes out what you breathe in. Study this tree; it is your teacher in the ways of harmony when I am not here.”

Then God brought us to another great, towering tree. This tree God called “The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.” God said, “This tree is not one to eat from. To eat from this tree is to choose division over unity, dissonance over harmony. To eat from this tree is to see the world in black and white, in zeros and ones. To eat its fruit would be to teach you another way to live, but it is not the way the Garden. There is so much to enjoy in the Garden that there is no need to eat from this one. Even here, alongside abundance is a limit. I have planted this tree here for the sake of balance, and in its shade, you can still learn much.”

Our days in the Garden stretch on and on. My companion and I are creating new songs, astonished by the mystery of harmony. Unity is intrinsic to our origin story, us and all the other earth creatures and trees and wild bushes. We are one. We are all made of the same earth, mixed with the waters and breath of life. Yet somehow, in the mystery of creation, the one you call God chose diversity, not uniformity, to grow out of that unity and interconnectedness.

There will be stories that come after this one, I am told. Of broken harmonies and dissonance, of rifts in the interdependent web of creation. Stories of domination and destruction.

But when I look at you–when I look at us–I see a wild, beautiful, and muddy mess; this chaotic goodness is where life grows. Just like a garden. 

May the one we call God, “I am who I am,” the Great Mysterious, give us the courage, the wisdom, and the notes to sing a new world into being.


Image by Pexels from Pixabay

Advent 4: The Struggle is Real

In the beginning, many moons ago, this hope, this Original Love, was formless and void, mingling with a sacred watery chaos. 

After the beginning, but before labor really kicked in, it took time, perhaps millions of cycles of cosmic heating and cooling, of contractions and deep breathing, until the inevitable need to push arose, and the Word was coaxed and coached into a form you and I would recognize. A form that could be held and swaddled. A form that was called “Word” for a little while, until slowly we began to know them as “Jesus.”

The manuscript my sermon from 12/18/22 at Madison Mennonite was based on. The scripture readings for the day were John 1:1-5 and Psalm 126.

As may be evidenced by now, Justin and I have chosen to make a household without the permanent presence of human children. Perhaps that’s a choice we’ll talk about more fully at some point. But knowing this, and in her own wisdom and desire, my sister invited me to the births of her twin daughters, who are soon to turn 10. Though I’ve been present for other animal births, witnessing the birth of Sylvia and Cora was a singular experience in my life.

There in the hospital delivery room, after being induced and waiting and waiting for contractions to come…there finally came a point, several hours in, when the inevitability of birthing these two set in—when there was no biological choice but to push, guided through the process by Frances, the midwife. 

And eventually, out they came: first Sylvia, or “Baby A” as she was known at the time, then Cora, “Baby B.” My mother, also present, was the first to hold Sylvia. I was the first to hold Cora, as my brother-in-law stayed by my sister, who rested for a bit before pushing out the placenta.

Hearing again the prologue from John 1 this season, and letting the midwife’s perspective filter into the text, I think of that delivery room that cold winter’s night, ten years ago. I think about the long, long wait of bringing an essence, a dream into a warm, pudgy, fleshy form. 

In the beginning, many moons ago, this hope, this Original Love, was formless and void, mingling with a sacred watery chaos. 

After the beginning, but before labor really kicked in, it took time, perhaps millions of cycles of cosmic heating and cooling, of contractions and deep breathing, until the inevitable need to push arose, and the Word was coaxed and coached into a form you and I would recognize. A form that could be held and swaddled. A form that was called “Word” for a little while, until slowly we began to know them as “Jesus.”

It would have required serious preparation, I imagine, this long gestation, punctuated by pain, the cosmos gasping for breath. Layered under John’s words, there is a Divine Struggle to bring an idea to birth, an effort to make real what was hoped for. A struggle willingly made by a mothering God. Without a doubt, there was in the beginning, a struggle, and the struggle was real. The struggle is still real.

Perhaps this phrase is a bit jarring in this moment… “The struggle is real” for many of us conjures up images like those that circulate on social media: one of my favorites — someone with a hair dryer in one hand and an iron with the bottom facing up in the other hand, a piece of pizza being reheated using the two devices… The struggle is real. “The struggle is real” is a phrase that encapsulates the ironic frustration of rather mundane inconveniences.

The struggle is real.

But the history of the sentiment tells another story.

“The struggle is real begins in hip-hop culture, where the struggle refers to the oppression… faced by black Americans… Use of this struggle dates to the” 1980 and 90s, “but it was likely influential rapper 2pac who popularized the phrase the struggle is real on his 2002 posthumous track, “Fame”. “(https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/the-struggle-is-real/)

We are reminded that “the struggle” has disparate meanings for folx in our communities. 

What Tupac names, and other persons of dominated groups have attested to, is that an imposed struggle can be a form of oppression. Racism, poverty, climate change, homelessness, transphobia—these obstacles that dehumanize or that strip the dignity of humans or of the earth are to, without a doubt, be resisted by all of us.

At the same time, we live in a society where the dominant culture tends to suggest that pain and struggle are unnecessary—problematic even. The ideal life is one without pain—at least pain that “I” don’t have to feel. This can be made possible, in large part, by outsourcing one’s hurt. In the process, though, one’s capacity for growth is stunted. 

My hunch is that we’ve each experienced this in our own lives: times when we have wanted to avoid pain and so passed it onto others; or when others have done that to us. And of course, it is systemic in our society, too, a central tenet of patriarchal white supremacy. 

This is what some call “dirty pain.” Resmaa Menakem, author of My Grandmother’s Hands, writes, “Dirty pain is the pain of avoidance, blame, and denial. When people respond from their most wounded parts, become cruel or violent, or physically or emotionally run away, they experience dirty pain.” It’s pain that gets stuck in the body and inhibits growth. It’s the kind that is transferred onto others, particularly those who are more vulnerable.

And, there is clean pain. Clean pain is the pain that mends and can build your capacity for growth and resilience. “It is the pain we experience when we don’t know what to do, when we are scared, and when we step forward into the unknown anyway, with honesty and vulnerability.” (Menakem)

Clean pain, though still painful, is natural. It’s grief we feel in transitions. It’s the soul-stretching sensation of being called out by a trusted friend. It’s the disappointment of failure, or the death of a dream. It’s the pain we experienced the minute our bodies left the womb and we felt the physical shock of emerging into bright light and cool air, so unlike our placentas. 

As much as I hate to admit it, it seems like we actually need this kind of struggle in order to grow. This kind of struggle makes us more human, more compassionate, more loving, more just. 

bell hooks, in a dialogue with Cornel West, spoke about the tension that we feel around letting clean pain be a part of our stories, of letting struggle shape us, “We also need to remember that there is a joy in struggle. Recently, I was speaking on a panel at a conference with another black woman from a privileged background. She mocked the notion of struggle. When she expressed, “I’m just tired of hearing about the importance of struggle; it doesn’t interest me,” the audience clapped. She saw struggle solely in negative terms, a perspective which led me to question whether she had ever taken part in any organized resistance movement. For if you have, you know there is joy in struggle…” (Hooks, Yearning, 1990)

hooks names something so vital for our experience of struggle, of pain—whether clean pain, dirty pain, or a mix of the two. And that is: the role of the community is to witness the struggle, to midwife one another through the contractions and labored breathing. The point is not to fix or erase the pain, but to validate the hurt, to offer an alternative perspective, and to help us keep pushing or resting—whatever our bodies are telling us we need.

In this last week before Christmas, as we cross over the solstice, we move through a holy time of transition, where the darkness, if we choose to enter it, can be a fertile, sacred space with potential for joy and growth. The midwife’s stanza for this week reminds us that to allow the Divine to be birthed in us is a sacrifice, as we offer our bodies to be broken open, like the ground receiving a seed. So, too, the psalmist sings of the tension of knowing God’s love and nurture, and yet struggling to make sense of the pain of exile and disorientation. There is a longing in Psalm 126 to make sense of the struggle, and to come out the other side knowing transformation.

These sacrifices—sacred struggle—make possible the birth of justice, of a love most profound, of the possibility of a solidarity that frees us, too. Like the wise MMC women shared two weeks ago, birthing work is messy work, what with the sweat and blood and urine and tears and all other kinds of bodily fluids. 

Preparing the way to bring our dreams, our ideas, justice to life is work and at times it is incredibly painful. It takes time, perhaps millions of cycles of our souls heating and cooling, our bodies pushing and sweating, for the Word to be coaxed and coached into existence.

As we go this week,
may we find safe places to be broken open
may we be safe places for others who are in pain
may we find courage to enter into the struggles that we face:
in our bodies, in our relationships, in our grief, in our struggle to care
may we know that we are struggling together, 
in solidarity and in hope that the Child of Peace— 
the Infant of Justice—
is being born in us once more.

I pray it be so.