When the woman saw that the tree was good for food,
and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree
was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit,
and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.

Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and
they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves
together and made themselves loin coverings.
Genesis 3:6, 7

Wonder of wonders!
Two beings fused as one body!
Yet they were wonderfully two and
their separateness was the joy
of their oneness.

But the sly snake came between them and
has done so ever since.
        
She pondered the Fruit without God,
by independence of Him.
Eve abused her individuality.

He, by weakness, acquiesced to her
and left listening to God.
Adam compromised his individuality.
        
So by independence of God
they lost their utter freedom.

They fell and forfeited their distinctiveness,
their marvelous separateness.
Their uniqueness from each other became . . .
enmeshment with each other.
        
No longer autonomous, walking with God,
as His two disparate children,
whole and healthy entities,
they now ate the same rotten fruit of sin,
and the sameness destroyed them as individuals,
trapped them into a false oneness of entanglement.

He would blame her. She would control him.
A bargaining war from hell making them
enemies unbeknownst.
Bound together in an endless struggle
for mastery or escape,
the marriage, now a partnership of rejection.
The living death of their fall
- aside from spiritual death -
was the loss of personhood, individuality.
The deliberate crushing of the differences
that make the person, whole,
and the relationship a union.

Never a winner, love as the loser
and God . . . the outsider.
        
Blame and control. Both Adam and Eve were lost,
buried by the sin-sick need for
someone to "carry my sin,"
and someone to "worship me."
        
Enmeshed,
no longer wonderful in their separateness.
Instead of two whole entities enjoying connectedness,
their union turned into idolatry.

They lost the separateness that
made for true union,
Gone was the mystery of
the unknowable in each other,

Making a wrong union of
who had been Two in harmony . . .
enemies now of who had been lovers.
        
That they lost God, we have long known.
That they lost their "individual self" -
of this we are ignorant.
        
Their soul's-focus fell
from divinity to humanity
and with it their worship.

Their eyes fell when their souls fell.
Being self-conscious and focused on the "other,"
instead of living by awareness of
God their Maker.

Changing their gaze exchanged their God for
a human idolatry, miserable and unsatisfying.

And they saw the naked shame of the other.
By an unaccustomed self-consciousness
they covered themselves
and hid their naked souls from each other.
        
They had never before been stared at,
but only loved and the nakedness
of being 'seen' covered them with shame.
     
They lived now in floating bitterness
over their differences
ever demanding conformity of the other
to their own ambition.
        
The tragedy of all the ages was played out
between man and woman and forever put them in
the contradiction of binding co-dependence . . .
magnets of opposite poles
ever repelled in their drawing.

They could not escape each other and they could
not find their individuality again.
Caught in an unceasing
dilemma, perplexed by the mystery of each other
like some perpetual wrestling match with
no winner and no end . . . .

It was a curse - a restriction - given by
the Author of Love to keep them bound
within their entrapment, and in the
misery of needing their Original God
by a purely individual relationship.
        
She, entangled with him by her drive to rule . . .
he, trapped by blaming her for his misery.
Caught in a hallowed net of dependence
on each other, ensuring the failure of both.

And by their garbled involvement,
made terribly alone.
        
True not only in marriage,
but in all up-close relationships of love/hate.

Copyright © 2001 Martha Blaney Kilpatrick