Genesis

A couple of days ago I came across the blog of a former co-student of mine from Leiden. Last March he had written a post especially for International Women's day. For the occasion he had rewritten Genesis. I was impressed. I asked him if I could translate it into english and post it on here, and voilà, here it is. It looks long, I know, but bear with me, you'll be happy you read it.

See it as an early Beltane present :) May Love, Light and Prosperity be upon you.


EVE

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was waste and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep: and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

And God said, 'Let there be light'. And there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good. And God called the light Day, and the darkness was called Night. Then the first day was at an end. God was tired and went to sleep.

The following day God created the heaven and the sea, the mountains and the rivers, the beach and the forrests. And God got excited, and created the fjords, the canyons, and the barren deserts. And God saw that it was good.

On the third day, God got up and looked at all the beautiful things. They were still a bit empty. And God created the fish in the sea, the birds in the trees, and the little creepy crawlies in the sand. And God saw that it was good.

Gods creating skills improved so God created the horses and the elephants, the sabertooth tigers and the dinoaurs, the armadillos and the tapirs. And to crown it all God created the sperm whales. And God was tired but satisfied, and the fourth day was over.

But on the fifth day God felt a bit lonely. God wanted someone to talk to, a friend. And God created man, and called him Adam. And the fifth day was over, and God went to sleep only after saying 'Good night' to Adam. And God thought that it was good.

Adam watched his reflection in the water. He was quite pleased with himself. He had a nice full beard, white teeth, clean nails, and muscled arms and legs. 'I am so beautiful,' thought Adam, 'I must look like God. God has created me in His own image'

And Adam walked around, and he saw the creepy crawlies in the sand, the birds in the trees. He saw the sabertooth tiger and the armadillo. 'I am like God,' Adam said, 'but you are not, because I can talk, and you can't. That means you have to obey me. I am the perfection of Creation.' And Adam was very pleased with himself.

Then he felt something under his foot. It was a little crawly animal, but now it was dead, because Adam had stood on it. Adam got cross. 'Why are you in my way!' he barked. 'Now you have soiled my foot, created in Gods own image! Now your dirty little black corpse is on my sole!' And Adam went to the river to wash himself.

When he arrived at the river he saw a fish. He grabbed the fish with his hand. 'What are you doing in my river?' Adam asked. 'This is my river, God promised me this river. He also promised me the land. So all animals must obey me.' He ate the fish. And all animals were scared.

God called for Adam. 'Adam, I want to talk to you, you don't understand!' But Adam didn't hear the call, because Adam was too busy bossing around all the animals. God was sad. God had created someone to talk to, but felt lonelier now than ever before. 'I've made a mistake,' God thought. 'I have given man the gifts of speech and thought, but I did not give him the ability to listen nor to love. How do I make up for this?'

God thought. 'What if I make a second human... one that can love and listen, and can teach Adam how to do that?' And God created the second human, and God called her Eve. She was even more beautiful than the first one.

Adam saw Eve. She was beautiful beyond words. Adam went to her. 'I am Adam,' he said, 'and you have to obey me, because I was created in God's own image.' Eve looked at him. She smiled. 'It's okay,' she said. 'Go to sleep. The sixth day is almost over. Now it is time to rest.'

Adam didn't understand what she meant. Her smile scared him. Who was this? 'Who are you?' he asked.

'I am Eve,' said Eve. 'I would like to be your friend. I would like to hear your stories, if you'll listen to mine.' Adam didn't know what to say. She was stunning. Her eyes seemed to look straight through him. Her hair was long, and her body was so round and so much more beautiful than his. All of a sudden he was ashamed of his own scrawny and square body and of the hair on his face and his chest. For the first time in his existence he felt ugly.

'Go away!' cried Adam. 'I don't want to see you, I want nothing to do with you!' That was a lie. He wanted nothing more than to be with her, look at her, and touch her strange body. But he was afraid to say so. 'Go away!' He cried angrily. Eve was scared, and ran away. She cried. Why wouldn't he listen to her stories? Why did he scare her so?

God called them, but was not heard. Adam and Eve were too involved with themselves and eachother, they were no longer able to hear God.

'How can this be?' thought Adam, 'She looks just like me, but still she is so different. We both have two eyes, a nose, and a mouth. We both have ten fingers and ten toes, we both have a bellybutton. We speak the same language but still we cannot understand eachother. Why will she not accept my autority? Why is she more beautiful than me!?'

He went to her. She had stopped crying. She had gotten hungry and had taken a piece of fruit from one of the trees. It was delicious. Seeing how much she enjoyed this foreign fruit infuriated Adam. How could she take pleasure from something he didn't know? Why hadn't she first asked permission to eat from that tree?

'Why didn't you ask me if you could eat from that tree?' cried Adam. 'That is not just any tree, that is a sacred tree! The fruit is forbidden to eat, God has told me that in person!' Eva jumped. She didn't know that. But how could something that tasted so good, that was sweet and sour and thirst-quenching, be forbidden? Didn't God allow them the good of Creation?

'Now God will always be angry with us,' Adam spoke with a strict voice. 'With us, and with all future generations. And that is your fault. From now on you must obey me, so you cannot commit a sin again. From now on you are my posession. If you refuse I will kill you, like you were a creepy crawly. If you follow me, I will be good to you. Whichever way, we have to flee, away from the tree of God, because God does not want to see us anymore.'

Eve was scared. She did not want to die. He looked dangerous, and strong. She did not want to fight. She wanted to know him, she wanted to see what was hidden behind those cold eyes. Maybe, if she followed him she would be able to teach him, little by little, to listen, and to love.

'Alright, I'll go with you,' she said. And Adam and Eve left the place where they had met, and fled. They ran from an angry God that they were imagining.

And God saw how Her children ran away, and cried silently. But God knew that parents must learn to let their children go, and that sometimes they cannot hear their parents voices. And God knew that they were not perfect, but She hoped they would learn to understand each other, learn to love, and that they would not hurt each other too much.

And Adam told his children the story of the sacred tree, and of Eve's guilt, and of the angry God. Eve averted her eyes, and said nothing.

And the children related the story of the tree and the fruit to their children, who then told their children, who told their children thereafter. And none knew how it really had occured.

This story was originally written by Aike Rots, in Dutch. http://aikerots.blogspot.com/2009/03/eva.html

Moment of Enlightenment

Just to share with you a small part of the wonders I sometimes have to read for my classes. I read this while the last 2,5 minutes of Coldplay - Fix You was playing in the background.

Murray Rogers, Anglican priest who has spent over forty years in Asia and the Middle East, on those he encountered of a different faith:

"I gladly share, without fear of disloyalty to Christ, their treasures of experience, their perceptions of the Mystery, their ways of breathing the Reality beyond all name and form. 'I' and 'they' have almost disappeared and in their place it is 'we'. No longer am I driven to fight crusades to bring 'them' over to 'my' side, as if Christ were on 'my' side. Fanaticism, including Christian fanaticism, is seen to be what in fact it always is, an appalling insult to the Divine Mystery lying beyond and within creation."

Strengthening your faith

"Will this world SURVIVE?"

it says, on the front of the little flyer the lady's hand is holding out to me.
I am walking home from class with a big bag of groceries and I see a lady walking towards me on the sidewalk. Just a normal, friendly looking lady with a bit of an eccentric coat on. When she is within 2 metres range of me she magically conjures a flyer out of nothing and stands still next to me. I yank my iPod out of my ears and listen to her.

I do that. My mom calls me when she sees 'religious' people walking up to our front door. "Selmaaaa, you take them." I enjoy talking to them. Or letting them talk to me. I don't know why. I'm interested. Not in becoming a Mormon/Jehovas witness/Hare Krishna/whatever, but in why they are.
Just before this encounter with the lady in the street we had talked about the 'strengtening of your faith' in class. Public displays of faith are not primarily to prove something to others or to convince someone else of your beliefs. Their primary function is to strengthen you own faith. New (voluntary!) women converts to Islam need some time to come to terms with their own religiosity. Wearing hijab (a headscarf)in public for the first time needs conviction. It means showing the world that you are a muslim. You are muslim. You remind yourself of that.

The same can be said of those that go from door to door or dance and sing in the streets. We usually think they are doing it to gain converts. And at one point you might think: "Don't they get tired of it? Probably no one ever says, Yeah sure I'll become a Mormon tomorrow".
But that's not the primary point. The simple activity of going out and telling others what you believe makes you aware of your own religiosity. It strengthens your faith. You think about what you believe, about God and the world and about how you think you could make it a better place. Or at least about how it has made the world a better place for you. Why not listen to them, let them speak? As long as the message is about love and peace, why not?

She smiles at me, the lady with the eccentric coat. I take the flyer from her and say "Thank you".

"Don't worry', she says,'The front sounds a bit ominous, but it has a good ending"

And for her it does.

Januari, academia

Wow...that month flew by...

In between all that time that I had people over (tell you about that later)my classes started again.
I am now taking an extra curricular class in Religion in Society. I wanted to take this class in stead of my Sacred Texts class, but since I was told in September I wasn't allowed, I didn't.
Unfortunately i found out in December that i could have taken my electives outside of the department, but that by then it was too late to do so. Sucks to be you, you're stuck with hermeneutics...thanks.

So now, just to piss off everyone in my department :), i'm taking it anyway! I can't use the credits for my degree, but the actual information discussed in class will be 1000 times more useful for my dissertation than random rambling about God in literature. (no offence :) it's just not my thing)
The Religion in Society class is actually an anthropology of religion class, with some sociology thrown in. Oh wait, wasn't that what I wanted to be doing all the time now? So I'm enjoying it :) Very much so. It's just good to be in a class where you actually know the names that pass in the conversation (Durkheim: check, Geertz: check) minor annoyance is that most of the other people taking the class haven't taken classes in religion or anthropology before. But they are all very nice and do see all of it with social science eyes, which is a welcome change from the horde of theologians that I spend most my time (classwise) with.

Before the start of the first class a student came in (I was obviously already there, excited :)) and said: I wonder if there is actually going to be a religious person in this class, that would be so interesting. (as a sidenote: this guy is ruthlessly atheist, thinks everyone who remotely believes in anything is an idiot and is, as far as I can see, definitely gay (or latently so.) Now read the previous scentence again, adding the image described above....)
I said: Well I'd rather that there isn't. That would be a welcome change of scenery for me.
This new classmate then could hardly believe there would be anyone within a university who can seriously ask in class, after reading a text on religious pluralism, how that text could be used to prove Christianity's superiority over other religions. (Which obviously happened in my first semester...I stared at him)
So! I love my social science detox moment of the week, my classmates are nice and more importantly: of the same age as me. The teacher is good (ie, fills most of her class with examples from her own research in...uh Peru(?)) and friendly. I think I have to go and talk to her about my dissertation research.

About that dissertation...my plans are starting to become more concrete. I have a supervisor now and she is very enthousiastic about sending me to Surinam for two months to look at the Inter-faith relations in paramaribo. Score :)
Hopefully accomodation and ethics board permission follow this month. That would mean that I'll be moving back to Holland in May, only to 'move' to Surinam at the end of that month. I'm already dreaming about sunshine and Roti.

Soko,soko!

Getting comfortable, studying

Ofcourse I'm studying here (oh really?) so that is also taking up some of my possible boredom time :). I am now taking two classes,
- Approaches to Religious Pluralism and
- Literary and Artistic Approaches to Sacred Texts

Last week I had my first presentation for my Pluralism class. The girl that was supposed to do the presentation this week dropped out of the class...so there was an open space. I offered to do it, so after working on it this weekend in Holland, and taking twice as long as planned, (thanks to a crashing Word Document......grrr) I went to class last Tuestday quite confident and happy with my five-page long presentation on an article on Islamic theology of religions.
Our professor starts the class with saying that he has invited a guest to today's class, as he is an expert on the topic. So he introduces the Head Imam of the Scottish Shia Muslim community to the class.
My jaw drops. Am I suposed to do my tiny amateur presentation on Islamic ideas of other religions in front of this man? This man that could loosly be compared to a Catholic Archbishop? Right....breathe....focus....
No biggie, I'm only going to introduce the ideas of the man that wrote the article, no personal opinions or theory-posing yet, so I'll be fine.
And I was fine, thankfully! Before I started my presentation I asked the Imam to help me or correct me wherever he felt the need, which he only did to help me pronounce a couple of Arabic words and names of theologians. He was happy with the rest. Phiew.
In the discussion following my presentation it was very interesting to hear him speak about his religion. You don't often get to meet someone so involved or with so much authority on such a topic and it was inspiring to hear him speak.
And I mean inspiring in a 'I'm happy I'm studying this'-way, not neccesarily in a 'I'm converting to Islam tomorrow'-way.

Turns out that he did the Masters programme that I am doing now last year, and is still working on his thesis. I think it's great that he is involved in Inter-faith relations like that. Yup, worth big 'thanks for helping save the human race'-points in my book.

World Peace

The Taugh Masters course in Inter-Faith studies that I hope to complete in September 2009 is one that aims to inspire students to think and act on inter-religious relations: communication and conflict. The world has not yet seen a day without human/human conflict. These conflicts are, unfortunately, frequently based on religious differences. The study of texts and social phenomena could help us gain insight into these conflicts and may even help us find an answer to the problems we encounter in dealing with the human desire of overpowering one another spiritually.

In the four years I've been studying religion here in Leiden these questions have always struck me:

Why do people always want to impose their 'universal truths' on those who are not interested in them?

Why not accept that your 'truth' works for you and someone elses might work for them?

Religion (to me) is nothing more than an invented structure of beliefs constructed to help people deal with unexplainable things. How to deal with death, dreaming and sickness?

Don't get me wrong, I am not an atheist, or someone that puts infinite value on modern technology (you might say:all that was unexplainable before can now be explained by science, so who needs religion?), no. I do think religion is very valueable and for one thing, I think the concept will never 'disappear' or will no longer be needed.

Religion, as science, is something people count on to help them in daily life. To help them move on when something is not directly clear to them. Which of these belief systems you used is a choice that can be taken either consciously, or as a result of years of 'indoctrination' or culture.

Whatever works for you might not work for me. Your ideas might make no sense to me.

Why would you think that your way of dealing with difficult things is superior over mine?

Why would you fight me to try to convince me your system is better than mine?

As you can see: Next year I expect to be able to bring peace to the world.

If not, I'll demand a refund of my tuition fees

:D