At some level, most of us humans experience a kind
of spiritual homelessness. A disappointment that life is not as full or good as
we know it might be--or could or should be. And neither are we. It's an ancient
ache.
The story of the Garden of Eden is all about this
ache. Something in us is homesick and yearns for life--our life and LIFE itself
to be other than it is. Some of our ancestors let this ache fill and then spill
out of them as the powerful narrative of gift and loss that Adam and Eve embody. They
had it all--and through their own 'fault' lost it. God banished them from the
Garden--escorted them to the East Gate of Eden and posted an angel with a
flaming sword to guard the gate eternally. We'll never live there again.
But we can visit.
The fruit of the Spirit--love, joy, peace, patience,
kindness, goodness, gentleness, steadfastness and self-discipline--are portals
to Eden. These fruits (and others) are like day-passes (or maybe hour or minute
passes) into the Garden of God.
But there's another story we need to tell alongside
Eden and the Fall--the story of evolution.
Instead of being created all at once at the top of
the food chain, we humans rose up through the ranks: the shape and history of
our brains tell this story. We a have fish/lizard brain, a mammal brain, and a
primate brain glommed one on top of the other--each doing the 'job' it evolved
to do. Our primate brain knows Good is always possible. Our lizard brain knows
Bad is always likely--and it's wired to fire fast--to bite, to run or to hide
in the blink of an eye. Lizard impulses can race from brainstem through our
whole bodies while our human brains are still putting on their shoes.
Lizard brain is amoral, too--whatever gets you
through the night in one piece! Human brain can imagine the Garden of God--and
can intuit we don't really deserve it!
Defining what we deserve is above my pay grade, but
pointing toward what we might experience is my vocation. And I think we can
visit God's garden and taste its fruit many times a day. There are many ways
back to Eden, at least for a visit. One way, for example, is through the gate
of Gratitude.
Our 'brains' have to work together to do this. Lizard
brain is wired for negativity. We're five times more likely to focus on
negative experiences than positive ones. Winning tickets of the
evolutionary lottery were held by those who had a knack for sniffing out danger.
Fear and avoidance helped us survive. A good portion of our misery comes as a hangover from this gift! So, it might not seem fair (fair, shmair!), but we get
to work five times harder to 'wire' our brains positively instead of
negatively. Gratitude is a great Re-Wirer.
To visit Eden, almost as often as we want, all we
have to do is to remember to notice the Good we experience during the day and
STAY with it for awhile--like about six times longer than we tend to do! We do
what we can to enlist Brother Lizard to begin to be vigilant for the Good. And
we reward him by Tasting the Good, savoring little bits of the day's grace with a grateful heart
and mind and body. We're not just remembering to notice the good stuff--but to hold it, feel it, linger and rest in it.
We simply set our minds to begin using our brains as they are instead of how we wish they were or believe they should be. At some point in our lives most of us thought 'Counting Blessings' was kind of lame. We don't need to think like this anymore. Counting our blessings can be nothing less than a portal to Eden. When we do it, when we practice gratitude five or six times a day, sustaining our focus for 10, 20, or 30 seconds, our brains begin to take a different shape. Literally. Neurons that fire together wire together--and the homelessness our souls have been tuned to experience begins to morph into the sense of home-coming we're determined to practice and trust.
