order

Blog #14: Tree on Fire on a Mountain

by rambler on Jul 4, 2022 category athlete, bible, coinhabit, Creation, elohim, Genesis, god, hebrew, medicine, order, plant-based, renewal, sacred mountain, triathlon

My wife was telling me about a podcast she was listening to while coming home from work one day, She Explores, which in general highlights stories of women’s experiences in nature and how these relate to life experiences in business, equality, family, etc. This particular piece was about the Cairn Project, who in their words, “expands outdoor access by supporting community-based wilderness and outdoor education groups around the country through a small grants program for girls and young women.” One of the groups they support, Embark, is involved in providing outdoor mentorship to refugee girls who are resettled within Utah. Through exposures to the mountainous natural world, whether it be camping, rock climbing, or other wilderness adventures, the organization gathers recently resettled girls from various countries around the world, including from Asia and Africa, and provides an avenue to test themselves, learn new skills, and develop self-confidence. Their idea is that learning to conquer physical challenges in this environment will give them the belief that they can also conquer the numerous other challenges that come with being a resettle female refugee. Having to learn a new language, a new order to basic community infrastructure, a new way to travel and collect daily items is something most of us have never had to do. Hopefully, challenging oneself in the shared outdoor environment, in physically difficult situations, will lead toward growing resilience and leadership skills that many of their participants have yet to uncover in their life journeys.

Since moving to western North Carolina 13 years ago, I have called the mountains home (excluding a year living in northern Ghana). Between the Blue Ridge and the Olympic Peninsula in Washington, our back doors have been the first step toward individual and family adventure, whether it be running or cycling on the Blue Ridge Parkway a few miles or a few tens of miles, hiking the narrow trails in the crevices of the Hoh River rainforests towards Mount Olympus, or taking one of the numerous trails at either place for a day outing. Among my first memories of northwest Washington is the mountain range on Vancouver Island sitting atop the Strait of Juan de Fuca and hovering beneath a clear blue sky. Later memories include the same mountain range peaking out from low fog over the strait, as well as those tops covered in clouds and the green bases staring at us across the water, dwarfing the freight lines headed for the ports of Seattle and Vancouver. There never seems to be a shortage of fun and inspiration from our local environments, no matter the season. As summer approaches, the return of tourists on the Blue Ridge Parkway will be a reminder of the draw to the mountains, for vistas, fresh air, physical activity, serenity, challenges, etc.

We are drawn to mountains for several reasons. The grandeur of them towering above all surroundings is breathtaking and can make us feel small and in awe of their massiveness. The different ecosystems they house provide delicate complexity to the balance of the greater environment and draw curious souls to come observe them meticulously and artistically. The ways they affect local climates draw people to live under their rain shadows. The ways streams and pools interact with rock and slope create some of the most beautiful and dangerous meetings of earth and water on the planet. We are drawn to them for their beauty and their challenge. A level of physical strength and endurance is required to explore and intimately learn these places, whether it be through scaling peaks, crossing glacial fields, or hiking on primitive trails. Several mountains are easily accessible with day hikes on tamed paths, but by far the majority demand a deeper commitment and focus to get to know. We often go to them to test our mettle, to build strength, whether it is mental, physical, spiritual, or social.

It should be no wonder that these places feature frequently in the Hebrew Bible, as places of challenge, places to meet the divine, places of uncertainty. In the first reboot of creation, the ark that contained all the preserved land animals comes to rest upon Ararat, which also hosts the first burnt sacrifice on an altar. Mount Moriah is where Abraham takes his son to offer as a sacrifice, only to have a provision in his place, hence passing his test. The story of Elijah calling upon Yahweh to ignite a water-soaked sacrifice and prove His power to the Israelites happens on Mount Carmel. The transfiguration of Jesus of Nazareth is said to have happened on Mount Tabor, and the Mount of Olives is where Jesus has his final test in the Garden, where the Jewish scholars and Roman soldiers seize him.

All the above stories have an element of danger in them, points of uncertainty of what is happening and what is coming next. Symbolically and physically, mountains represent danger, places where the weather can change lethally and without notice. Add the presence of God in the mix and that aura is increased exponentially. In three of the above stories, fire is present, just as on Mount Sinai in the tree where Moses first speaks with Yahweh.

While Eden isn’t explicitly stated to be on a mountain, we can surmise that the garden is in fact on the top of a mountain. Four rivers flow forth from Eden in Genesis 2: the Tigris, Euphrates, Gihon, and Pishon. Scholars debate the location of the ancient Gihon and Pishon Rivers, with several believing the Gihon flowed through Ethiopia, making it physically impossible for all four rivers to come from the same source. Again, reading the Bible in its context, the point of this description is likely to say that all of life, all of civilization, flowed forth from this cosmic mountain. In the metaphor of all life-giving rivers flowing from a single source, that source would have to be higher than everywhere else, hence a mountain. Several ancient religious traditions have the idea of a cosmic temple mountain, like Eden.

Many modern Christians probably think of Eden as a lavish, peaceful, perfect resort garden where everything was at its pinnacle. I wrote earlier how this was unlikely the case in reference to human work being part of our calling. If Eden is a cosmic mountain, where God lived, would its presence in the garden appear as a peaceful, serene singularity? Or would it be expressed more so how it was elsewhere in the Bible, as fire in a tree, a storm cloud upon Sinai, or fire raining down from heaven onto an altar? This brings us to the point in the garden where the presence dwelled: the Tree of Life. God-Elohim commanded humans to eat from every tree in the Garden, including the Tree of Life, and not from one specific tree. Why did Eve and Adam not eat from this tree, which was right next to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil? The latter was “good to the eye”; was the former not?

The burning bush (s’neh tree) on Mount Horeb was fear-striking to Moses; the entire mountain (s’neh  Sinai) was fear-striking to the Hebrews. Could the Tree of Life have appeared similarly to the Adam, as a tree radiating with fire, striking fear into the hearts of humankind? God’s presence must have appeared impossibly powerful and challenging. It didn’t appear safe in their eyes, and the alternative tree did. Likewise, the Tree of Life on top of the mountain garden is not safe in our eyes. It will strike fear in our hearts. Its future revelations in the Bible appear equally deadly, even shameful, whether it be on Sinai, Mount Carmel, or on Golgotha where Jesus of Nazareth hung from a Roman execution rack, also referred to as a tree by some Christians. Synonymous to eating from the Tree of Life, approaching God and submitting to his wisdom appears counter-intuitive and treacherous. It means exchanging our version of prudence for one that is hazardously foreign to our comprehension of the world. It is here, on top of a mountain, where humans can come near to the spirit and decide whether to take from the tree that appears perilous but ultimately leads to the vision of the same tree in Revelation 22, which provides fruit continuously and medicine for the world.

Humans have looked to mountains for millennia in search of something, whether it is God, themselves, or nature. I have yet to climb a mountain and see a tree on fire. Odds are I won’t. Not physically. Recently I participated in an Ironman race in Tulsa. While not known for mountainous terrain, the last mile was an uphill shot to the finish line. Lucky for me I didn’t see a burning tree at the end, otherwise I would have questioned a turn I took somewhere on the course (Tulsa was busy that weekend with several events going on. There may have been a gathering of folks burning trees to celebrate or denote something). But I did get a rush of joy and satisfaction at finishing the event. It reminds me of all the Eden hot-spots around us all the time, whether at the finish lines of grueling athletic events, in personal or community gardens with veggies percolating under the soil to create life for several organisms, or sharing coffee and conversation with someone. Somewhere in all those places perhaps is the semblance of a tree on fire.

The Relationship

by rambler on May 11, 2020 category animals, bible, coinhabit, Creation, disorder, fruit-bearing trees, Genesis, grass, order, subdue, Uncategorized

After recognizing the pattern of the Genesis 1 creation account of paired days and themes, evidently there is a special connection between the seed-bearing and fruit-bearing plants and trees on the land (the final creative act of day 3), and the humans created in the image of the gods (the final creative act of day 6). What is the connection?

Genesis 1:29 gives one straightforward response to the question: all seed-bearing plants and trees that produce fruit are meant to be food for humans. That is our nourishment in the ideal, pre-fallen state. All acts of creation have aligned to set up this perfect homeostasis of life-sustaining energy. We are intricately connected to the plants both in the creation patterns and in the time following the story. If we are to believe that Genesis 1 is a story of the world set up the way God intended it, and that all the pain and suffering that we see today originated at the choice of humankind to pursue its own wisdom represented by eating the forbidden fruit, then we must recognize that everything that was put in place prior to that event was at perfect form and functionality, one aspect of which is how humans eat. By no means is this the only notion to be drawn from the passage. The idea of humans and trees sharing a functional commonality is another. But it is one.

Immediately following the proclamation of seed-bearing trees as food for humans, God commands the green grasses and plants be as food for the beasts of the earth, birds of the sky, and…

The connection of seed-bearing plants and humans are actually one of a few intimate relationships established by God on day 6. Immediately following the proclamation of seed-bearing trees as food for humans, God commands the green grasses and plants be as food for the beasts of the earth, birds of the sky, and creatures moving along the ground. This doesn’t match up as nicely in the creation day mapping scheme as fruit trees and humans, as the plants are still the second creative act on day 3, but birds were created on day 5 and the beasts of the earth were the first creative act on day 6. Nevertheless, the plan for animal kind, everything that has the breath of life (God’s ruach, Hebrew translated spirit, in animals and humans), receives the gift of plants as food. So people aren’t the only ones for whom this is an ideal, but animals are also included. This obviously comes into contradiction with what we simply observe in the animal kingdom: some animals can only eat other animals to live, i.e. felines. I will get into this later, but we do know that humans can make a choice to live according to this principle and live well.

Another established relationship in this story is that between animals and humans. In Genesis 1:28, we are told to rule over the animals and subdue the earth. On initial reading, to us this seems like a green light to utilize all of creation as we see fit. Several critics have cited this as the reason the Western world has made a habit of using and abusing our planet: it is both permitted and demanded by our religious tradition. We seem to have a knack for, with the aid of modern technology, manipulating the earth to accommodate us and our desires, to the point of wreckage. The same may be said for the animals. If we need them to meet our nutritional needs by being a direct source of calories, so be it. That is why they are here.

We practically can already see some problems with this mindset in our current place on Earth. As we manipulate our technologies for our liking, we see the detriment this is having in our environment. Climate change has become a pretty complex issue, but it does appear to be at least in part due to human activity. It is well established that the harvesting of animals for human consumption also leaves a larger carbon footprint than the harvesting of plants. Science has established this data recently, but we should have recognized that disaster would happen when we interpret Genesis 1:28 as a free reign for our desires.

We may make the assumption that the relationship between humans and animals is only vertical. We rule them, case closed. Looking at the creation patterns, this doesn’t appear to be the case. We also have a horizontal relationship with animals, as we were created on the same day as they. We are creatures just as they are, made on the same day as the land creatures, sharing that day of creation with them. All life forms, unicellular or multicellular, plant or animal, sea swimmer or land rover, fall under the auspices of creation and the physical laws that govern it. After the animals were created, God stated that what he created was good, just as he did after all other creative acts in Genesis 1. This suggests that all of creation was already good in and of itself before we showed up. That should remove some entitlement we may feel as the only important part of creation.

But rather we are intimately connected with the earth as evidenced by the Genesis 2 creation account.

We are not separated from the earth, dropped down here from some other realm to make use of what we find. But rather we are intimately connected with the earth as evidenced by the Genesis 2 creation account. This states man was formed from the dust of the earth and had life breathed into him, hence the name of the first man as Adam (from the Hebrew adamah, “of the ground”). Mankind is formed as the weird combination of “dirt and divine breath (Hebrew ruach)”. That should make us rethink our relationship with the earth, that we are intimately connected with it, and that anything we do to it, any means of disrespect and negligence we exhibit, will come back to affect us accordingly.

So our relationship with the rest of creation is not a simple linear pattern of one entity above the other. We are told to rule the animals, but at the same time we are on something of equal footing with them. Both animals and humans share a relationship with the botanical creation of day 3, assigned to use those resources as our food. And humans have a specific relationship with the earth, commanded by God to subdue it. Reading Genesis in its ancient context, subdue most likely refers to farming the ground, as the ancient Near Eastern cultures reading or listening to this narrative were primarily agrarian. In Genesis 2, the second creation narrative, humans are put in a garden, where their food source is fruit-bearing trees, and told to “work and care for” the garden, in other words farm the ground. In fact, no plants had yet showed up on earth until humankind was created because, in part, there was no one yet created to work the ground. But while we are told to subdue the plant-producing earth, we see that if by subdue we mean abuse and disrespect, following our own wisdom and working toward our idea of what is right for us, our intimate connection with the earth will cause us to feel the effects, however welcoming or catastrophic they may be. The effects of treating the earth in this way can be expressed in God’s curse to Adam in Genesis 3 after he decides that God’s wisdom is secondary to his own by eating the forbidden fruit:

Cursed is the ground

Because of you;
Through painful toil you
Will eat food from it
All the days of your life
It will produce thorns and thistle for you
And you will eat the plants of the field

By following our own wisdom, making our own choices for ourselves and our rule of the earth, suddenly what should be existence in a harmonious garden in which life cannot help but sprout up the best of what the plant kingdom has to offer, becomes a struggle against the earth to strangle from it life-sustaining nourishment.

We are also made aware by God in Genesis 1:30 the relationship between animals and the earth, not directly involving humans. They are to have the green plants as food. Why should we care what they are given to eat or not? We know that we have the fruit-bearing trees. This is likely a warning to humans from God concerning our stewardship, as subduers and rulers over earth and animal, that that relationship between the animals and green plants is sacred, and part of our responsibility in ruling alongside God is to make sure the relationship is preserved and allowed to flourish. We are not to utilize the whole earth for our own immediate good, but to reflect, as image-bearers carrying out God’s rule on earth, the care God gives to all of creation by helping protect this other sacred relationship. Therefore, we are not to ransack the earth for all its resources, but rather to use what we need in order to live, trusting that God has created a generous space capable of taking care of all creatures.

After every creative process, the end of every day of creation, God sees that what he has created is good. This is repeated six times in Genesis 1, all immediately after the acts of creation: light, gathering of the seas, vegetation, heavenly bodies, sea creatures and birds, and wild land animals. However, he doesn’t say this right after humans are created. Rather, after humans arrive, God proclaims humans’ role, and the role of plants and seed-bearing trees for animals and humans, and after that proclamation does God say that this is very good, clearly a more emphasized statement from what he has previously said. While all of creation had been proclaimed good up to this point, apparently the final statements of order at the end of the chapter, statements laying out the functional relationships among living creatures and the earth that houses them, have added exponentially, not just summarily, to the quality of creation. I think this means we are not to take these final statements lightly. We may want to really consider what they mean for our purpose and symbiosis with the world and with God.

The Cosmic Landscape

by rambler on May 7, 2020 category chaotic waters, Creatio, Creation, disorder, elohim, fruit-bearing trees, Genesis, god, myth, order, poem, Uncategorized

In the Jewish and Christian traditions, the entirety of the structure of the world and our relationship with it can be found on the first three pages of Genesis. Everything that happens forward from there, from the stories of the first ancient peoples, to those of the Hebrew nation starting with Abraham, to a resolution for Christians in the form of Jesus of Nazareth, can draw roots from this introduction. I never realized this until recently, thanks to The Bible Project Podcast, which I cannot recommend highly enough, whether you are religious or are curious to know more about the basis for Christianity. This understanding has revolutionized the way I see the entire story of humankind and the earth.

Before any word of creation is spoken, Genesis narrates that the world was Tohu wa-bohu (translations include formless, void, wild and waste).

We find the initial structure of creation, including time and space, as God turning disorder into order. Before any word of creation is spoken, Genesis narrates that the world was Tohu wa-bohu (translations include formless, void, wild and waste). There are many different interpretations of what was actually there, but the wording suggests that the earth did exist in the beginning, at least before God’s first act of speaking, though it was in a “nothingness” state. That changed the way I looked at the creation story as traditionally taught. We like to have definitively established boundaries in describing our world, and are uncomfortable when boundaries get blurred. It is much easier in our minds to comprehend the universe starting at an instant, the beginning of time. We want to think that at some point there was nothing, then suddenly something appeared. This isn’t a bad thing, but it is a bias we should recognize, the need for a firmly established order of events. It is what the singularity of the Big Bang attempts to explain. The same holds true for those of us wanting the creation narrative to say the same thing: a fundamental starting point, a sequence of events, then here we are.

Reading the passages of Genesis 1, I think the story expresses something more about the process of turning chaos into functionality, not specifically the start of something out of nothing, but more so the ordering of material that was already there. In an already existent realm of “wild and waste”, God’s first act of order is the separation of light and dark, our most recognizable form of energy and the lack thereof, of visibility and blindness. A stubbed toe on the foot of the bed in the middle of the night makes it clear to me that the two are separated! More comprehensively, we see different worlds come out whether it is day or night. Take a walk outside your house during the night and day and the sights, sounds, environment, and inhabitants of each time vary extensively. Most notable of the differences may be the sources of light that rule each time period, as described on day 4 (the coinciding function of days 1 and 4 is another fun pattern to talk about later).

Repetition is also a form of order that is established right at the story’s beginning by establishing a recurring pattern of evening and morning. It starts right after the initial proclamation of light and dark and continues throughout the first creation narrative. All that happens from here on out through Genesis 1, happens within the confines of repeating organized days.

The first creation day appears to establish order around the functional concept of time, rather than the start of something material out of nothing, as the watery abyss was already present before the first word in Genesis 1:2. The second day of creation is more concerned with the first ordering of the space that is present, namely waters. Waters above, heaven, separated from waters below, on Earth. Just as day 4 bore the inhabitants of day 1 creation, day 5 bears the inhabitants of day 2 creation, the waters below to be filled with sea creatures and the waters above to be filled with birds.

Day 3 focuses the ordering of space more narrowly toward the waters below, that area which we occupy, rather than the waters above, or the heavens. On day 3 we see a 2-fold origin sequence. From the waters below that have been separated from the heavens, comes forth 1) dry land out of the sea; from the dry land comes forth 2) seed-bearing plants and fruit-bearing trees. Day 6 repeats the pattern of the creation of inhabitants for the day 3 world as day 5 did for day 2. Day 6, like day 3, contains a two-fold creative process: God makes 1) the animals which come forth from the land and 2) humans. Unlike day 3 on which plants come forth from the land, there is no specific statement that humans came forth from animals on day 6. That would fit the creative pattern seen on day 3, and those of us who wrestle with trying to make scientific knowledge and faith congruent may see this as pointing toward an evolutionary process for the creation of humans. I don’t think that is a question that this narrative is concerned with. Perhaps a connection more likely than animals from humans would be between trees and humans as the final acts of creation on days 3 and 6, which is another path of contemplation that could be related to nutrition as well. Either way, as 21^st century scientifically minded people, we need to be cautious of the presuppositions we bring to the text, the notions of what questions we think the Bible should answer for us, rather than letting it speak to us on its terms in its context.

At this point we can see the pairings of creation days: days 1 and 4 (light/dark and the inhabitants of both domains), days 2 and 5 (waters above and below, and the inhabitants of both domains), and days 3 and 6 (land bursting with green vegetation, and the land’s inhabitants). I was certainly never taught this growing up in an American church environment, which is disappointing to me now that the story of Genesis 1, reading the patterns in this way, has a suddenly new significance for me that is so much more beautiful and purposeful in describing our world and the functionality of it! Understanding these patterns has brought to light a new concept of the order of the creative process, one that is more nuanced and dense in imagery than I could have imagined.

I wonder if part of missing these patterns has to do with the contemporary way we learn and interpret our world. As I stated earlier, as moderns we look for literal, black and white sequential events or points in time from which to tell our stories, whether it is creative fiction (though the magical realists may differ on this one), guides for assembling Ikea furniture (that seems a pretty practical reason for such story-telling), or the origins of our place in the universe. Genesis 1 refuses to comply with this world-view. How can green plants thrive on dry land before the arrival of the sun? But by reading Genesis on its terms, understanding the design patterns from which it originates, we find an incredible world of wisdom that can open our minds to the structure and purpose of the created world. This in turn may help us begin to comprehend the Order behind it all, the Order which resides in us as image-bearers, that which has established an ideal existence for all living things.

For further reading on these ideas, The Lost World of Genesis One by John H. Walton is a great book that discusses this subject in more detail. It is very accessible for us nonscholars and challenges the approach many of us have taken to these ancient scriptures to provide a rich interpretation of the first book of the Bible.

order

Search