A Place for Both

A few lines from "Echo of the Soul" by J. Phillip Newell has generated more than just a little time spent on reflection.  By the time someone has gone some ten years into the season of retirement, it would seem that everything has been figured out.  The truth is that the farther I go on the journey and the deeper I go into the years, the more there is to ponder.  The quote from Newell reads, "Genesis celebrates the goodness of creation at its birth and the sacredness of humanity made in the image of God." 

 

It was this kind of theological thinking that put the Celtic spiritual community at odds with the established Roman Catholic Church.  It all came to a head in the year 664 at the Synod of Whitby.  The organized church was infused with the doctrine of the total depravity of humankind and there was no room for the view held forth by the Celtic way of thinking.  There was no room at the table for both and with the Augustine view prevailing, Celtic spirituality was pushed so close to the edge it nearly disappeared completely.

In these years it is no longer so easy to simply accept what has been taught since before I started the experience of learning.  It seems that there is room for both.  Neither has to be denied in order for the other to exist.  After the comment about the goodness  of creation and the sacredness of humanity, Newell went on to write, "It (Genesis) also speaks, however, of sin 'lurking at the door.' " (Genesis 4:7)  The moment of conception is surely more a moment of God touching humanity with a hand that enables His holiness to be imprinted on new life than it is a moment of that new life being afflicted and tainted with an uncontrollable evil.  Perhaps, the Genesis story of life in the Garden of Eden is more of a prototype of the human experience and predicament than we realize.