Genesis 2:19-20
Adam squirmed in the mud-
womb hearing God say ‘let’.
With each ‘let’ life leaped
out of nowhere into ‘is’,
the first verb Adam needed
to make sense of his world.
Being after being appeared,
materialized, happened,
took its place among the rest.
After asking God “What is it?”
for the umpteenth time, half way
between aardvarks, bears and
what would come to be named
zebras,
God said to Adam,
“I create, you relate.
You make the material
world matter to you.”
In the garden of origins,
we were primed for poetry.
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The Garden of Eden is not history, it is mythology, the poetic way of
telling a deep truth, a cultural expression of who we are. In this story
Adam, [Adamah (Hebrew) = earth, ground] is hearing God speak
creation into being Everything is new and unknown to Adam. Adam is
curious and wants God to tell him what everything is. God says “No!
You give the new names.” God bestows upon Adam the responsibility
of poet [poiesis (Gk.) = to make] meaning-maker, that is, the capacity
to form a relationship with each new being.