Chapter 2 Naked and Afraid

CHAPTER 2: Naked and Afraid

“What did you see?” he asked the boy.

“I saw one like a man with three heads, an eagle, a dove and a sparrow. He does nothing but wander around and talk to God but he never uses his mind. He eats from all the trees in the orchard but the big tree in the center and the other one along its edge. He overlooks the one but he carefully avoids the other,” the boy said.

“You see boy,” he said, “He was told not to eat from the one he avoids  but for God to have told him of the other would have tempted him for it is the tree of life. He is not alive yet.”

The boy seemed preoccupied so he asked him what he saw and he said, “I see the same one lying in a deep sleep like he was dead. But he went to Dream Land and had a dream where God opened his side, took out a bone and closed the flesh again not even leaving a scar.”

“Indeed he was dead,” he said, “But when he saw the woman, him being good, thought they had made her to be his wife that they would be part of each other’s body like a bee is part of a hive and the hive like a dead body. For that reason all who are good leave their parents and hold firm to their wives forever and they both become one spirit, their own body.”

“Test her!” the Eagle screeched.

A beautiful bird landed by the women and folded his wings to its sides to test her but he deceived the woman and caused her to believe a lie that they would be like God if they disobeyed him knowing good and evil.

Then the Eagle landed in among the trees and walked in the cool of the day. He was talking to the Sparrow and the two like a man and a woman with three heads each, an Eagle, a Dove and a Sparrow they overheard him from where they hid back in the trees because they knew they were naked.

The Eagle called to the man, “Where are you?” and he replied, “Here I am.”

“Why are you hiding from me?” the Eagle asked.

“Because I am naked,” the man replied.

“Naked,” the Eagle screeched, “Have you eaten from the tree I told you not to eat from?”

“The woman,” he said, “She gave one to me and I ate it.”

He screeched at the woman, “What is this you have done?”

She said, “The beautiful  bird deceived me and said we would be as you are. So I ate and gave one to my husband and immediately we knew we were naked and became ashamed so we sewed together these leaves to cover us.”

He said to the beautiful red bird, “Because you have done this I can never trust you not to do it again. I have to curse you forever!” But turning to the man he said, “And because you listened to your wife and not to me the ground will yield weeds and brush for you and you will work hard and sweat aplenty to grow your food.” But to the woman he said, “You will have pain in childbearing and a monthly flow of blood. But I will raise one to take your punishment away by avenging you.”

Then the Eagle said to the Sparrow and the Dove, “What shall we do? They have eaten from the tree and like us know good and evil.”

Then he made coats of animals for them and chased them out of the orchard.

“Tell what this means,” the boy said, “For I am puzzled. They were always naked even in my vision. The man was naked.”

“They never felt ashamed,” he said to the boy, “You see boy, God does not charge the innocent ones’ sins against them. But when they know what to do and do the opposite he charges it against them. They disobeyed him and were ignorant no longer but had fallen. Therefore the woman is dead for believing the red bird but the man is not dead, just an enemy of God for eating what she gave him in her evil. But the red bird is damned for leading an innocent female into sin. The Eagle is right but not compassionate enough. In the Dove it is not even a sin to be naked but in the Eagle it is and also a sin in the Sparrow but not a sin unto death, a source of shame.”

Then they were no longer like the rest of the spirits God made in Heaven. They were dead on earth and they went out and hid in a cave and grew crops for food and the way was hard but the woman the man called the Mother of All Living and all women who bear at least one child go to Heaven because they are forgiven for being like Mother of All Living. The barren, it is not so. They must go the way of a man to go to Heaven. But they were a beautiful gray color and enjoyed being in the wilderness alone a lot

As the boy and his dog kept walking they heard the cry of a baby and wondered what it was.

So the boy asked his dog, “What was that?”

“The Mother of All Living has given birth to a man,” he said and the boy looked just as she said, “I have given birth to a man!” 

He said to the boy, “Notice he has only one face, the face of a human being which is to say he cares nothing for God.”

Later as they kept walking there was the cry of another baby.

“Is it her again?” the boy asked.

“It is but see he has the face of an eagle,” he said, “He believes in God and cares for him.”

Suddenly the boy was caught up in a vision and the eagle was towering over a man with a human face and he said, “Where is your brother?”

“How should I know?” the man replied, “I’m not his babysitter!”

“What have you done!!!” the Eagle roared, “The ground calls out to me and I can feel your brother’s blood in it crying out to me!! For doing this you shall be a homeless man and the ground will no longer grow anything for you and wherever you go your life will be in danger!”

The man fell down before the Eagle whose claws were extended so that it had trouble standing erect and begged for his life believing everywhere he went people would find him and kill him.

So the Eagle touched him and he turned black and shiny.

“Now get out of my sight!” the Eagle said but as he ran away from the Eagle the Sparrow went with him hoping against hope the man would listen to him, which he never did not more than once.

It all happened over a sacrifice to the Eagle, their test. The man with the eagle face brought the best lambs of his flock while the man with a human face brought only grain from the field for one was a herdsman and the other a grower.

The Eagle told the loser to try harder next time and not to be so discouraged. But he came in from the field and talked his brother into coming out in the field where he killed him.

The man met a female human and married her and they had a son and he listened to the Sparrow and built a city he named after his son filled with humans for there were humans that had tiny brains there in those days. But the DNA of the children of the Mother of All Living dominated and in the man’s line there was one who worked with brass and could do anything with it, one who was a brilliant musician and two that worked with iron all from the man’s DNA.

Then as the boy and his dog walked on he heard yet another baby crying.

The boy then asked, “Is it her again!!” filled with hope.

“Yes,” he said, “She thinks God has replaced her son whom the man with the human face killed.”

It took a generation or two but the children of that son began to call on the name they gave the Eagle.

“But what it all means, the Dove will know,” he said to the boy, “You can ask him.”

“I think I can understand it,” the boy replied.