Ok.
Yesterday afternoon I was invited to share my thoughts on Eve's creation in the Bible, because for many of us it's... a bit confusing... to put it mildly.
Something like -
"What about woman? What about the myth of Eve's creation - which claims she was formed from man's rib? What are we supposed to do with that? It sounds so demeaning... as if she - woman - is secondary?"
And yes, it's a good question... and one I've long avoided - not from fear, but because I've had the sense that it contains something far greater than it initially appears to.
So. Yes, here goes.
Now I'm risking it.
And let me warn you right away.
Without quite knowing if this might put me somewhat at odds with certain folk church interpretations... But since I'm not a priest - just a free-thinking man with fire in his heart - I stand in a freer position, where I can allow myself to draw on theological, symbolic and mythical sources, and attempt to interpret the story in a way that makes sense for heart, spirit and intellect. Naturally combined with everything I normally draw upon, which many of you understand better, from Western movements concerning personal development of all kinds.
And let me establish for safety's sake - my interpretation is not a replacement for the classical understanding. It's an addition. An expansion. An attempt to lift the veil and ask -
"What could this mean, if we dare go deeper?"
And for me it's also a kind of homecoming.
Because for many years I've written and spoken about masculinity and femininity as complementary forces. As two opposing - and mutually dependent - movements, both between man and woman - but also within each of us.
And perhaps the story of Eve isn't as strange, patriarchal or backwards as many have assumed - or been led to believe, due to poor teaching and the dumbing cultural Marxist lens that always resorts to understanding EVERYTHING through a lens of oppressor/oppressed.
Because PERHAPS the account is a hidden pearl. Particularly in our time. A code. A key to understanding something deeply true about both the relationship between man and woman... and the relationship between 'the creating' and 'the birthing' in the human being.
Here's my attempt anyway to interpret it -
And yes, I admit - at first glance it sounds strange, almost ridiculous.
That woman - she who carries life, she through whom all human physical comes, her who is the portal for creation and life - should be created from a rib...
A piece of bone.
A spare side bone.
A byproduct.
But this is where we must read deeper. Because the texts in the Bible rarely speak in surface form.
It speaks in layers. In symbol. In mystery.
And here it begins, if we want to understand - that it's an allegory and an emblem of something interior in us.
In Hebrew in the original text it doesn't say "rib".
The word used is 'tsela' - and can also mean "side" or "flank".
And that word doesn't necessarily point to a bone - but to something... taken out of man's being...
His interior.
His center.
His depth.
So not a piece of flesh, but a dimension of being. Something essential and something load-bearing in the structure.
Not just something physical is taken out of man - something is taken from his depth.
Something he himself couldn't access without losing consciousness - notice that he's put into deep sleep.
What's taken out isn't random.
It's his hidden half.
The feeling.
The receptive.
The life-giving.
That which he himself cannot contain - but which in her can gain form, face, body.
It's as if God pulls out the IMBALANCE POINT that the human being in its first form couldn't yet contain, and forms it as an independent being. So the two can see each other, and learn what they each carry within themselves - and lack.
And here's where the mystery arises:
Because she is him - and not him.
She is of his flesh - and simultaneously all that he is not. She carries within her that which he had to release in order to become whole.
And he recognizes her - not as something other, but as something refound.
"This is bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh," he says.
Or in other words - "You are what I have longed for - without knowing what I was missing."
EXACTLY LIKE some of us in clear surrendered moments can feel, with our wife or husband.
Or when something refound in the psyche - in the spirit - clicks into place within us.
So.
Woman is therefore not created beneath him - as something lower. And she's also not created above him - as something that should rule.
She is taken from his 'side' (his interior/center/depth)... to 'stand at his side'.
She is not a byproduct.
She is the missing piece.
That which makes Human whole.
(In the story Adam is man - but since it's an emblem, this naturally applies to all humans - regardless of sex).
And therefore it's only after woman is created that Human is referred to as man and woman - as two who together constitute one.
And then comes the most beautiful part.
Woman - Eve - means "life".
And it's only when she arrives that everything begins to grow. Creation isn't complete until she's there.
The world isn't in balance until the feminine steps forward.
(Is anyone going to tell that to the angry modern feminists who are tearing everything apart... 🤓😎)
And notice the rhythm in the story...
Man is put into deep sleep.
Something is taken out of him.
And something new is born.
It's not just surgery with a scalpel. It's an archetypal image of sacrifice and rebirth.
Man MUST GIVE SOMETHING of himself - for LOVE and COMMUNITY to arise.
He must lose something - to become whole...
(Pause. I literally can't grasp how deep this is... and that it was authored several thousand years further back than we can trace... 🥵🥵 ...and that simultaneously they try to make us believe that it was they who were the primitive ones back then - lost in darkness - and that we in our modern world are the enlightened ones....)
And it's still like that.
The TRUE man, 'the real Adam', must open himself, bare his side, and give up - for woman, life, community to step forward.
And woman must step forward - not as a copy, but as counterimage. Not to mirror him - but to reveal him to himself. Like a mirror, not of sameness, but of difference.
Of COMPLETION.
It's only when the two (the masculine and feminine) understand their difference - and sacrifice themselves for each other - that something divine begins to take form.
So maybe it's not a question of woman being a byproduct.
Maybe the whole point is that the masculine must open itself, for the feminine to be born.
And that the feminine, when it steps forward, brings LIFE, WHOLENESS and BEAUTY to everything that would otherwise be DUST and LONELINESS.
(as sidenote - it's an experience many have when they visit a home that's only been inhabited by a man who's lived alone for a long time... emptiness, dust, lack of life, stiffened, frozen in time... Think a bit about what loneliness and lack of what a woman - the feminine - does to a man (and vice versa) - and the consequences the modern society has where increasingly more people live alone...)
And then finally.
A thought that reaches all the way up and brings it home...
Christ... that is Jesus - who is often called 'the new Adam' - is also pierced in the side when he hangs on the cross...
His rib pierced.
And out flows blood and water - that is, life and spirit - from his side.
And there Church is born.
Humanity.
The Bride (to Logos).
The receptive vessel for Truth.
So the beginning repeats itself in the end.
And what could resemble "nonsense" perhaps turns out to be a code from eternity.
That love ALWAYS begins with an opening.
A loss.
A sacrifice.
And from there - Life.
❤️🔥🪽
...
Hope that casts some light - and that I don't end up hanging out to dry (on a cross) for my thoughts. 😅
I admit the patterns I've begun to see in recent years are colored by experiences of both inner and outer character, which are sometimes difficult to explain.
But it is what it is - and it's what I see.
Good Sunday (now that I again know what day it is... 😅)
