madness

How did this madness begin?

Well, it happened in the beginning. In the very beginning.

After Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden fruit, they became ashamed of their nakedness. When they heard God walking in the woods, they hid from His presence. But God was everywhere and nothing could escape His senses. God was angry, yes, so very angry. Because now Adam and Eve, and their children and their children’s children, would have to leave the Garden of Eden forever.

But when God finally banished Adam and Eve, He did not do it in a fit of righteous rage. Softly, gently, sadly, He brought them under the shade of a great gnarled acacia tree. They were ashamed in His presence; they were awed by His presence.

Being a loving and merciful Creator, omnipotent and ineffable, God couldn’t just send them away. In the Torah and the Bible, it is written that He clothed them in garments made of skin; in the Qur-an, it is written that He turned to Adam and said to him words of inspiration. But what is not written anywhere is that He gave them something else: a keepsake. It was something for Adam and Eve to always remember Him and Paradise by.

What God gave to each of them was shaped like a leaf, only slightly larger than a fist. It reflected light from the outside but it also glowed with a soft and warm crimson light from within. And it pulsed in a peculiarly perfect two-tone rhythm.

“It is called a ‘Heart’,” God replied to the unasked question in their upturned eyes. “It holds the greatest force in all of Creation. It encompasses the beauty of Paradise. It contains my promise of protection and your source of salvation.”

Humbled, Adam and Eve received their Hearts in awed silence and mumbled their thanks.

“In your darkest hours, it, I, will be the light that guides. In your deepest sorrows, moments, it, I, will be the words that whisper comfort. In your desires and doubts, it, I, will be the strength that tempers will.”

Adam and Eve held their hearts in both hands and looked at it in silent contemplation…and were lost in the peace of God’s presence.

“But remember, it is only a symbol. What you have inside of you (pointing at something in them, somewhere below their chins and above their stomachs) is far greater.” Then God smiled; and winked.

So Adam and Eve were led to the Eastern Gate and the Door to the Garden of Enlightenment closed for eternity. Cherubim with flaming swords are said to guard that gate day and night until the Day of Judgment comes. But that is another story. This story is about Adam, Eve, and their Hearts.

So Adam and Eve lived in the wilderness of the world. They hunted, they tilled, they had children…and they took care of their Hearts. For in so doing, they felt God’s closeness to them, and their oneness with Him in Paradise.

Their children and grandchildren would often ask about the Hearts—while seated before a fire on a cool winter evening or lying amidst the grass and flowers of spring—and Adam and Eve would gladly tell them The Story: of Creation and the Time Before the Exile; and when God gave them their Hearts… and when He smiled… and when He winked.

When Adam and Eve passed away, their Hearts passed on with them. Adam and Eve’s children told the story of Adam and Eve’s Story of the Hearts to their children. Then the grandchildren told the story of the story of Adam and Eve’s Story of the Hearts to their children and grandchildren.

This went on for hundreds of years, with each generation telling the story of the Story of the Hearts to their children and grandchildren. The story of the Story was ancient when Babel was new. And when the Tower was struck down and Adam and Eve’s descendants began talking in different languages, the story of the Story of the Hearts was still told and re-told.

And then, somewhere in the telling, or sometime, the Story changed.

People first forgot about the wink… then the smile. Then of God’s gesture. Then of God’s last words to Adam and Eve. In time, almost all of God’s “last words” to Adam and Eve were forgotten. And eventually, even the Hearts were forgotten.

So the scattered peoples began to make new stories from fragments of the first one. These stories were in their turn told and retold—translated, adapted, changed. And because each story was but a fragment of the story of the Story and was different from other fragments, people disagreed on which story was true… or which story came first… or which story ought to be told… or which story ought to be believed.

In a few more hundred years, wars were fought for the sake of the stories, cultures were erased, cities were pillaged and razed, civilizations were enslaved or hunted to extinction.

Today, wars are being fought for the sake of the stories, cultures are being erased, cities are being pillaged and razed, civilizations are being enslaved or hunted to extinction.

All these for stories which have lost their meaning.

Aren’t religions just terrible?