I am mid way through the new best seller by Glennon Doyle
” Untamed : Stop pleasing , Start Living “.
I was really struck by the ending of one of the chapters
Own your own wanting
Eat the apple
Let it burn.
Years ago when I was a new Christian , I was in a women’s bible study group . We were studying the ‘ Fall ‘ . We were talking about Eve and her crucial mistake of eating the apple and its subsequent domino effect on the earth. I remember being really struck by this; all around me were murmurings of her calamity & in my natural openness and perhaps naivety to the Christian faith , I said ‘ I think Eve was brave ‘ . The flurry of voices filled the room admonishing me for my comment , albeit in a loving ‘ she’s new to us ‘ type way : ‘ she was stupid more like ‘. I then spend another 8 years as a christian but I realised that perhaps my initial reaction never left me , my intuitiveness that Eve was brave was damn right , but under the scrutiny of my new friends I submitted to the new way of life that I had forged to myself. I , as many women are , was pressured to feel, fit in , agree, submit and to follow that which went against a deep feeling in my heart.
I realise that I have always been brave. I was seeing what was in my own heart inside Eve’s and I was denying it. As I leave the Christian life behind , there are still remnants which need to be swept up and put away , taken to the dump in fact. Eve , you were fantastic. You were brave and true to your instinctive nature to need to know what is true and what isn’t . To seek that which is unknown. To step out of the boundaries which have been placed around you by man, society , culture : the list is endless. The things you were told as a little girl , the lies you were fed by your mother, your friends, the bullies, the bosses , the teachers . That which doesn’t serve you , trash it . With a big whack in the bin like a basket ball hitting that ring.
Pick that apple , it’s ripe , it’s juicy and despite that you might be told it is the way to sin & estrangement with God , it’s actually a secret pathway to freedom , nature, death , new life , more death , divinity itself. Mother Earth , God, oceans , trees, everlasting oneness and love. It’s a gateway to Love. Its a pathway to trueness to oneself . And that , my friends is the one thing left for you to have which is your own. To mould , shape, change , convert, put away , pick back up , chase , follow , create !
Eve was a bad ass mother fucker.
