"And why do we have all these troubles? Because they done gone and ate that apple?"

I'm still smiling at the excellent question and attitude she displayed along with it tonight with her reddish black cornrows glistening and her eightmonth belly projecting. The apple is what our weighty grief balances upon? The rebellion of two who communed with God in the best possible world, the Garden of Eden, caused this pain and suffering? It's all so ludicrous in a way, unbelievable, mythical despite the literal-reading demands of my earlier congretation. It's a question that once made me lose my faith (with help from Twain in "Letters to Mother Earth").

It's a question I still wrangle with and am more comfortable with the evidence of damage: corruption, death, sickness, terror, envy, anger, shame: more comfortable seeing the results than analyzing the components of the scenario from which it issued. My Genesis "willing suspension of disbelief" is set into action, although it is craziness to believe in it. I've heard the literal belief in the Adam and Eve story called backwoods. Primitive. Ignorant. So forth.

So be it. If it launches me correctly into what appears to be the truth of faith, then I'll believe it somehow with humility.

The truth of faith was there again tonight in the circle of women. Those who can state still, stated it. Those who can listen now, listened (there I sat). Those who can question, questioned with a gesture.

The clear visionaries and discerners told us about the truth of faith. I began to get a hope again in my heart that I can want a fuller presence again; that I will allow it. The top comes off and the pitcher pours something warm like chai tea to flood to the toes. Renewal of the mind ... who is your god ... being silent ... giving up others to His work ... support. All those words, morsels of juicy steak, began to become nutrition again to a daughter who picks at her food, quite preoccupied with minimizing, minimizing, minimizing, to make up for a lack and to create one. May you lay out your long table of delectables, Lord, within my Spirit again. Amen.