[Ad-lib stories lead into sermon…]
Well, that is counter cultural talk. I mean, someone's gotta be to blame—right? That's the flow of our dealings with one another around our anxieties, vulnerabilities, fears, and need to control: guilt, blame and shame, the formula we use to get the discomfort off our plates and find others to bear the pain.
We chose this way of being with one another a long time ago; cultivated from our Judeo-Christian beginnings in the mythic drama of Genesis.
I speak of the second creation story in the Bible. You see, God planted a garden in the east of Eden for the man, now known as Adam. It was paradise, but with a catch: in the middle of the garden was rooted the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
And the Lord God commanded the man, "You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die."
Soon it was clear that Adam needed a helper and companion, so Eve was formed out of one of Adam's ribs. It is written that they were both naked but were not ashamed. Notice the preview of coming attractions here: the seed of "shame" put in our minds.
Adam must have told Eve the edict about the tree of knowledge, for she repeated it to a serpent who asked her whether she could eat of any fruited tree. But the serpent said to the woman, "You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."
So, Eve, liking the idea of becoming wise, took of the fruit and offered it to Adam who ate as well. The first knowledge they attained, out of all the available knowledge in Eden, was the fact that they were naked, so they covered their genitals and hid in the bushes when God came round.
(God) said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?" The man said, "The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate." Then the Lord God said to the woman, "What is this that you have done?" The woman said, "The serpent tricked me, and I ate."
Shame. The root of this word comes from a word form that means "to cover." When we are ashamed, we feel exposed, uncovered and vulnerable, and somehow we deem these feelings as wrong. Not only did our mythic forebears cover their bodies with fig leaves out of shame, they covered their mistakes by use of blame.
God then administers many curses. The serpent is destined to be the woman's enemy, the woman will have pangs in child bearing, pain in child birth and be ruled over by the man, since her choices led man astray, and the man will be destined to toil hard and long all the days of his life until he returns to dust in death. Adam and Eve are then forced out of the garden, imposing a distance from God, though God does give them clothing as a symbol of a remnant of God's protection as they venture out into the wilderness to fend for themselves.
These mythic forebears are embedded in our collective consciousness. Joseph Campbell, renowned scholar of myth, called myths "literature of the spirit." Myths are indicators of the themes that support human life and shape civilizations. They are also an indication of the power centers and assumptions that the dominant culture is promoting. This myth remains a point of reference in religious, social and political debates in our country to this day. It lurks in the shadows of our dealings with one another.
The questions which initiated the writing of this story are questions that many of us still ask to this day. Why is it that we struggle so in the world and still never feel safe? Why do we have to die? Why does the process of birth include pangs and pain? Why do we feel distant from the Source of All Being and have to experience times of wilderness?
The overarching answer within this narrative is that we must be wrong. Our insecurity, our vulnerability, our pain must be our fault. We must deserve this uneasiness, this powerlessness, this lack of control. If we stayed obedient to a simple, proscribed life we wouldn't be struggling. If Eve and then Adam hadn't disobeyed God, reaching for more knowledge, life would be paradise. Death and pain and bewilderment proves that we are guilty. And when it comes right down to it, it's Eve's fault, Eve and that serpent friend of hers.
Many of you may already know that the serpent has taken on many symbolic meanings over the centuries. One of the meanings of the serpent, present during pre-Biblical times, was that of renewal, regeneration and rebirth modeled in the shedding of its skin. It was identified with female power, the one whose body transforms, the one who gives life. In Medieval Christianity, thousands of years later, the depictions of the Fall (as this story is named) show the serpent as a seductive, slithering female being. So, when the God in this story condemns the snake to enmity and separates the snake from the woman forever, it is an act of disempowerment, taking the woman away from its source of regeneration and placing her in the control of the man. Her pain in child bearing is seen as punishment and proof of the logic of her diminished status. Adam shares in the shame, being cast out of the garden because he was unable to hold his own and so destined to toil the days of his life, diminished by distance from God.
Shame. A dynamic that creates an irretrievable brokenness. It justifies an ever punishable state of being. Shame compares itself with perfection, something that is not of this world. Perfection is an idea that tyrannizes us—it is an illusion that we think we must attain, like the lost paradise. Perfection is a moment or state that is frozen, static, contrary to life which flows and changes. So when we strive for perfection we feed our shame with our guaranteed failure. It is impossible for us as living creatures to be changeless and pain free. So when we choose to focus on shame and create that vicious cycle of rejecting who we are as ever transforming beings, we block ourselves from truth…which is why we feel distant from God.
Once a person is broken or off balance by shame a core doubt comes into play which convinces one that she or he is not worthy, undeserving, a failure, unlovable. I made that mistake, I am unworthy. I betrayed myself, I am unworthy. I was imperfect, I have lost the chance of wholeness, I'm doomed, it's done, I can never get it back.
Shame breaks the spirit by reinforcing an image of oneself that can never be real. Shames defies unique being. Eve reaching for her own knowledge of good and evil meant a deviation from the collective. If we all had our own discernment and relationship with the Source of all Being then there would be no way to control the behavior of the individual. The best way to disempower someone is to make them feel badly about themselves.
Then he or she is vulnerable to the world of should's: you should be different, you should be what I want you to be, you should serve my expectations, you should take on responsibilities for the welfare of others, you should take my abuse, you should be happy with what I give you.
And those who are doing the "shoulding" are equally far from their own centers. Their place of shame takes the shape of casting blame: it's your fault that I do not feel worthy, it's your fault that my world is not perfect, its your fault for as long as I can keep it your fault to avoid how I really feel about myself.
So, our original forebears of human being, Adam and Eve, are cast out of the garden. They have created a permanent stain of shame within our make-up, making it impossible to ever fully enter our inner sanctum, making a permanent barrier between our lives and assured, whole-hearted well being. And so in this idea of life, we must count on the mercy of a God, a power outside of ourselves to justify our worthiness. All because Eve, the mother of humanity, loved life enough to learn more about it and to risk her own power of discernment.
Now to make matters worse, or, more controllable, an idea came to being to make this stain of shame retroactive—absolutely inextinguishable—no way out. Let's create original sin. We are bad from birth, we are bad before we choose anything. We are bad before we are conceived. We are unworthy because our parents had sex. Let's make sex a sin. And because the woman and the serpent are seducers, because we men who dominated the literature of the spirit at the time feel too vulnerable in our uncontrollable attraction towards women, let's make it Eve's fault. Let's load it all on Eve, the female of our being.
So when we feel inadequate due to our shame and that feeling oozes or bubbles or explodes out of us, let's offload it on Eve. She can take it. Why? Because she was condemned to bear pain… because it's her fault that our lives are like this.
[Ad-lib Tracy Chapman song: Last night I heard the screaming…]
The truth is, we are all in this together. The blame game is just another part of the shame game. It's just as devastating. It fractures all being.
Shame creates a formula for life, albeit a self destructive one. It thrives on judgment, usually self condemnation. The pain of being not enough is so hard to bear that we often cover it with other behavior. We protect ourselves from a sense of worthlessness in a variety of ways. A common way to hide shame is through addiction, another is to repel out in hostility and anger, putting down others to lift ourselves up. Another symptom of covered shame is envy or jealousy, comparing ourselves to others who we deem "better" or in "better situations" than we are. Sometimes we become deceitful for fear of punishment over our inadequacies or we isolate ourselves through hyper activity or seclusion.
It's all about a basic distrust of self as inherently good. It's also about seeing God or the Universe as distant and judgmental, something or someone to whom we have to prove ourselves worthy.
This is not the only way that the Bible is read or used as a support to religion. There are countless choices made in one's relationship to the Bible. In the 19th century our forebears were known for rousing, reasonable and liberating Biblical scholarship, lifting up the celebration of life and our part as co-creators, the gift of love and our moral obligation to deepen and widen that Love.
Unitarians and Universalists throughout history have argued the good news of a loving God or life affirming Universe, that creation is a success in all its mystery, that our being is a gift and our moral wisdom intact when we discipline ourselves toward truth, beauty, justice and love. The inherent worth and dignity of life transcends shame and can teach us the way to our true worthy nature is within us and about us.
Getting rid of the tyranny of shame is not about finding ourselves free to do whatever we want and fulfill any whim. We are creatures that forget, that lose our way, that strike out in fear and avoid discipline. Getting rid of shame and the cycle of self destruction that continues to feed and justify that shame is about finding ourselves as capable of goodness, claiming our ability to heal, finding our way again, picking ourselves up and persevering with the intention to reflect and manifest our inborn worthiness.
Copyright © 2009 Lisa Ward. All Rights Reserved.