Guilt (by Constantine Gochis)

Dad struggled (who doesn't I guess) with religion all his life. That he became a Catholic has always been a mystery to me, albeit a Gift I don't in any way regret, for him, and for me. I think the "mistake" he makes in this short thought piece is that he makes Adam and Eve co-equal with God, which is what got them in trouble in the first place--they thought they could take God hood, when in fact, everything that comes from God is a gift, if you believe in religion at all. Dad seems to make the sin purely sexual, and it is not, I think, in what reading I have done, merely about sex. It was about disobedience to the One who created us. If one believes, man did not create a god. It is the other way around and the enormity of that reality, if you believe, demands humility, not grasping. I sense also, in my father's discourse here a shift. First, he seems to dispute God's absolutes, which he sees as arbitrary, and then he laments the lack of absolutes in the culture. But dad struggled and I am in awe of his thoughtfulness, always. 


I've never been too sure what Adam and Eve did in that forbidden Garden. In my early maturating years I pondered the intractable ire of the Deity over the eating of an apple.

Later, when I sought understanding of the great mysteries of life, I was told in hushed tones, by men in black cassocks, that they had disobeyed G-D in a more material manner--"much more seriously" said Father Spiridon, an early mentor of my spirituality.  "Polee Kako," were some of his words, which in Greek means, "very bad."

Many years later, in a period of early revelation I learned the real substance of disobedience.  I wondered at the reasoning of the Creator. Why imbue us with a precious gift and then refuse us the right to enjoy it?  How to characterize this item of Divine beneficence?

I heard it described by a young lady in succinct terminology, though somewhat colorful, to wit, "If'n the Good Lord made anything better 'n this, He mussa kep it for Hisself."

Consider:  There may have bee mitigating circumstances for Adam and Eve.  For example, many scholars believe Eve was enceinte before they were expelled from Eden so maybe the black robed Father of my youth was in error, and it wasn't the "knowing" each other, but the specific act of eating the apple, as I thought originally.  In this case, had the black robed Father the prescience of the scholars, he might have said, instead, "Polee kalo" which means "very good," though sadly the prelate was already too aged to savor the benefits of this new knowledge.

Think of the implications of this unwarranted guilt.  A early Church Father castrated himself in order to be free from temptation; Saint Jerome said that the only purpose of marriage was to produce virgins, and ordained that these must be kept in that pristine state--in a kind of a non-productive palindrome.

I must not scoff.  We of this generation have found the truth.  There is no black and white, only grays; no evil or evildoing.  The seeming aberrant must have a causative factor, by a controlling grandmother and an over-affectionate mother, and therefore prone to eating many apples, some of them in the Oval Office.

Richard Gere comes to mind.  Clearly, he says, there is no such thing as guilt.  There must be an absence of hate if man is to survive.  He has learned this in his peregrinations among the placid monks of Tibet and some contact with the Dalai Lama.

"Is Hitler evil?" a suspicious Charlie Rose offers in an interview.  He can ask probing questions.

"Excessively mischievous," counters the learned actor, in an answer of latter day profundity.  Therefore, to quote from Omar a possible summation:

"Come fill the cup/and in the fire of spring/the winter garment of repentance fling/The bird of time has but a little way to flutter/and Lo' the bird is on the wing."