I am giving the Mother’s Day talk in church, so I spent every spare second writing it today. Here it is:
As members of the Church, we have a singular interpretation of the Fall and of Mother Eve. Unfortunately, we also tend to speak of this experience in a singular way. Our ritual of teaching this principle often goes like this: We frame Eve’s “brave” choice to eat the fruit in relief against other Christian theologies which castigate her for this choice. Then through a question and answer, we collectively arrive at the conclusion that while all the rest of the world makes Eve out as the villain, we do not. We collectively pat ourselves on the back for this doctrine and move on to the next point.
My discomfort with this way of teaching the Fall stems from two questions. First, where are Eve’s contemporary accusers? In my own experience attending a different Christian church during my childhood, I never once encountered someone teaching about the fall of Adam and Eve. All I remember were sermons on Christ and grace. And the secular world, which is admittedly rife with misogyny and malignant beliefs about women, rejects the existence of Adam and Eve altogether. Therefore, the way we currently teach this doctrine is plainly anachronistic and strips this story of its actual power to change us as individuals and as a people. What does this story matter to your personal spiritual journey if the only purpose of Eve is to highlight that our church is more true than others?
Brothers and Sisters, I would like to bear my testimony that the story of Eve is one of the most relevant, life-altering stories we will ever encounter in scripture, and she applies to you. Before we untangle her immediate relevance though, let us walk through her story once again and make sure we have it right.
In the Garden of Eden, God created Adam and Eve. The 1604 translation of the Bible says that Eve was Adam’s “helpmeet,” but I recently learned from a BYU talk sent along by Emma Freestone that the Hebrew translation of “helpmeet” is ezer k’negdo. Ezer means to rescue or save, and k’negdo means strength. So Eve was not a meek, suboordinate helpmeet for a superior Adam. Beverly Campbell, once the Church’s director of international affairs and author of the book, Eve and the Choice Made in Eden, gives us this translation of Genesis 2: 18: ““It is not good that man should be alone; I will make a majestic, saving power, equal with him, to be his companion.”
Adam and Eve were together given commandments directly from God. Right and wrong were clearly taught. The path for righteousness was obvious and clear. To eat of the tree of knowledge was forbidden, and both Adam and Eve took this instruction to heart.
When Adam was presented with the fruit, he rejected the offer straightaway. Adam didn’t so much as ask Satan who he was or why he was initiating this disturbing conversation in the first place; he was so intent on obeying the commandments of God, that he “just said no.”
When Eve was given the fruit, she immediately recognized that the nature of the conversation she was having was just as important as the conversation itself; she asked Satan who he was, and questioned him on their relationship. She plumbed his motives and then took time to seriously consider the questions he posed. What happened next is difficult to explain, but “Dr. Nehama Aschenasy, a Hebrew scholar, said that in Hebrew the word which translated as beguiled in the Bible does not mean “tricked” or “deceived” as we commonly think. Rather, the Hebrew word is a rare verb that indicates an intense multilevel experience evoking great emotional, psychological, and or spiritual trauma.” (The Gift of Giving Life: Re-discovering the Divine Nature of Pregnancy and Birth, pgs. 2-3) This deep trauma opened Eve to the sensation of yearning. Eve yearned for knowledge. She hungered for experience and wisdom. When Eve ate the fruit, she literally took her life into her own hands to get knowledge, experience, and wisdom, whatever the cost, and however dark the journey. And, make no mistake about it, the the cost for her choice was high and her journey was dark. Ultimately, however, our beautiful theology gives us an enlightened understanding of her choice and journey. Though her choice broke God’s law, her journey was God’s will.
The personal application of Eve’s story is fraught with peril, and I believe it is that sense of danger which keeps our current conversations about her so lamentably superficial. In our Church, we celebrate Eve the woman, but we leave her example largely alone. Our church culture places a lot of emphasis on living our lives much as Adam did. We are taught to follow and obey, keep the commandments as perfectly as we can, and to put our trust and faith in God. When the prophet speaks, we are told that we are invited to receive personal confirmation of his words for ourselves, but we never discuss nor are we told what to do if our personal encounters with the Spirit lead us in an alternate way. When we have questions that seem to have no answers in this life, we repeat to ourselves the handy metaphor about the “shelf.” We put those questions on the shelf, faithfully trusting that in time, probably in the next life, we will have all the answers we need and everything will be okay.
There is nothing wrong with this approach to faith and to life. This, as we can see in scripture, was Adam’s exact approach. He followed, he trusted, he believed, and he obeyed. There are many situations in life where Adam’s approach to life is not only preferable, but honestly enlightened.
At the same time, Eve’s approach to the question of choice and agency is wise. She hungered and thirsted for further light and knowledge. She longed to be filled. She ate the fruit, welcoming the onset of complexities, ambiguity, confusion, and sorrows of mortal life. She took a dark journey, and, as she would one day articulate, this strange and terrible descent put her in the exact center of God’s will.
We, Eve’s children in the latter days, are on our own mortal journeys. There are times during our journeys that we will be faced with hard choices about what to believe, whom to trust, and how to act. There are those among us who have questions that feel urgent, that can no longer be shelved, and that we need to address if only to preserve our personal integrity. There are those among us who, as Eve did, hunger and thirst after further light and knowledge. We long to be filled.
As Eve did, we find ourselves stepping out onto journeys that feel dark and uncomfortable both often and at times. A true wrestle with questions about faith means that we will be vulnerable, our minds will be malleable, open to new ideas, able to internalize truths and deceptions all at once. My own patriarchal blessing explicitly tells me that part of my life journey will involve taking steps into the dark, but it also assures me with a gorgeous promise. As long as my heart is pure, there will always be protection there.
This is a poem I wrote two years ago while on my own journey, entitled She Sonnet.
She is the sonnet, dust of the divine
Infinity incarnate, bipedal spirit.
Her garden walled in weakness, flesh and fat,
She: The great molecular paradox.
Daughter, mother, wife, she-friend of the Friend,
Acting on the messy-hued backdrop
Of mixed intentions. Healing, hurt, wounded, whole,
Begotten Maker–her rest, sweet repose.
Sifter of messages, media, words;
Speaking, hunting, searching, skimming, hearing
Static noise and still spiritual thunder
Sorting seas of verbiage to find the Word.
The grinding search summed up in one sentence:
She–with the ears–hears God in her own mouth.
I have sound reason to believe that as long as we keep our faith, hope, and love close, these journeys into the dark unknown will yield rich treasures of spiritual knowledge. As we continue on, we discover that perhaps we quest not for concrete answers, but a dynamic framework for confronting both facts and mysteries.
One such mystery is the mystery of our Mother in Heaven. We know she exists, thanks to not only Joseph Smith’s explicit confirmation of this fact, but also of the plethora of other religions out there that have sensed the truth of the feminine divine. These religions have given her many names, Ashera, Isis, The Blessed Virgin, Great Mother, Shakti, Great Goddess, Shekina, or Ruah, (the Hebrew word for Spirit–did you know that “Spirit” is feminine in Hebrew?). http://www.marymagdalenewisdom.com/the-creative-heart-in-the-divine-feminine/
In our religion, we call her Heavenly Mother. We don’t speak of her much because, we often claim that we do not know much about her. But are we completely ignorant, and if so, why? If we don’t know much about Heavenly Mother, then it is because we have not made efforts to form a relationship. What divine, celestialized, perfected mother, would not yearn to have a relationship with her Children?
I would further speculate that Heavenly Father has not hidden Her from us because He could not bear for Her to be disrespected, as our cultural mythology so often hypothesizes. The feminine divine is equal to Her masculine counterpart and does not need His protection. After all, the first connotation in Eve’s name is “strength.” Rather, if She has not been revealed to us in all of Her glory, then it is either because we have not sought Her, or She has withheld Herself. Perhaps She does not care to be translated to our hearts through a patriarchal institution and through men. Instead, perhaps She longs for a direct, personal connection with us. But She is a veiled mystery, and if we wish to seek Her, we must go on a journey.
I am not an expert on Heavenly Mother. I personally am only starting this journey for myself, but as one on the journey, I can report that the preliminary discoveries are breathtaking not easily translatable to language. For that reason, much of the writing about Heavenly Mother happens to take the form of poetry, all of it thus far penned by inspired Mormon poetesses. Most recently we have Rachel Hunt Seeblik’s book, Mother’s Milk. If we had time, I would love to read the whole book here. Instead, I’ve narrowed it down to four short poems:
What Rosemary Taught Me:
It counts how we
God-talk.
He, Him, His.
She, Her, Hers.
They, Them, Theirs.
It counts how we
God-image.
Almighty Father.
Nursing Mother.
Partnered Parents.
What the Mother Taught Me
Creation is
More than
Procreation.
It is snow, birds,
Trees, moon,
And song.
Still Small Voice
The Mother was not in the wind,
Nor in the earthquake.
She was not in the fire,
But in a still, small voice.
She can Be Loud When She wants
She can be in the wind.
She can be in the quake.
She can be in the fire.
She can laugh at the still, small voice.
Eve’s spiritual wrestle and subsequent embrace of mortality in all of its perplexing opposition should give us the courage to wrestle with God about troubling political, theological, or personal issues that feel pressingly relevant to our own mortal experience. Faith journeys surrounding topics such as LGTBQ issues, historical questions about blacks in the priesthood, the historical practice of polygamy and the ghosts of this practice in current doctrine, contemporary church policies, and the infinite variety of much more personal traumas, outlooks, and experiences all invite questions that could, and, at times, should be shelved.
But, whether we are biological parents or not, we who are grown must be able to engage the questions that our young people and children bring to us. The questions they will ask in this particular time in history will be some of the hardest questions the Church has ever faced. The answers we give them will shape how relevant the Church will seem to the reality of the world they live in. We can stick with the advice to “shelve it and have faith,” or we can give them specific, topic-related advice to our own personal wrestlings with the questions at hand. Better yet, we can encourage them to step out into the dark unknown of their own faith journeys, buoyed by the knowledge we have that God has seen us and our faith through when we did the very same ourselves. If God is real, and they are, then we can have the absolute assurance that the mess, the chaos, the unknowing, the questions, the search, the loss of innocence, the loss–these are at the center of divine will. They are part of the plan. Though the journey is dark, we are watched over, protected, and, eventually, lead to the still waters and green pastures of knowledge, understanding, and wisdom.
We often quote Proverbs 3: 5-6 Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.
The next part of that proverb encourages us to actively seek wisdom and informs us that wisdom, here incarnated as a woman, is valuable:
13 Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding.
14 For the merchandise of it is better than the merchandise of silver, and the gain thereof than fine gold.
15 She is more precious than rubies: and all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her.
16 Length of days is in her right hand; and in her left hand riches and honour.
17 Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.
18 She is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her: and happy is every one that retaineth her.
It is no coincidence the wisdom here is a woman, a female tree of life. Eve was the first who understood that the “getting of understanding” and the “finding of wisdom” have eternal value. When in conversation with Adam, Eve does not apologize for their mortal experience. Instead, she says, “Were it not for our transgression we never should have had seed, and never should have known good and evil, and the joy of our redemption, and the eternal life which God giveth unto all the obedient.” (Moses 5:11)
If your life feels complicated and full of loss, consider our Mother Eve, who reframed her own potential shame onto a template of faithful, wise and even joyful understanding. If you find yourself in the middle of an honest struggle that feels dark and uncertain, look to Eve, your spiritual predecessor, your first mother.
We are never too old to engage in a significant spiritual wrestle. By the time our father Jacob engaged in a divine wrestle, he was already the patriarch of a large family. He was a prophet who had seen at least one vision of the open heavens. Clearly, he was not newly schooled in things divine. And yet, a personal crisis gave Jacob the impetus to spiritually and perhaps even physically (scripture is unclear ) wrestle directly with God. He emerged from that wrestle with a name change, an eternal blessing, and a hip condition on the side. No longer was he just “Jacob,” but he was Israel, and his House would stand forever.
What blessings await us when we either choose or are compelled to engage in a wrestle with God, our Heavenly Parents? What information will we obtain? What wisdom will be ours?
We never know until we eat the fruit.
Mother Eve led the way.