1. ‘Beginning’ – a hopeful word, often associated with new life or starting again.
Medieval Monk writing an illuminated Bible - In The Beginning.
Well there he sits, my little monk: writing my story. He is getting it all wrong. For generations I have been trying to tell him, but he can’t hear me – I realise that now. I will begin again with a different audience. I will begin again with you. Thank you for listening. Please help yourself to fruit.
In the beginning Lilith did the right thing. She took one look at His grand design and told God it could not work. As a project it was badly planned and, as a program manager, God really needed to think through the structure, re-code and talk to His project team more. Did He listen? Did He bugger! Utterly disillusioned by God and an inadequate Adam, Lilith left . God is not one to forgive and once His PR had finished with her, she was left in darkness and shrouds.
God had to begin again. He’d got Adam as some kind of rookie contractor, but Adam wasn’t working. Well he couldn’t could he? He hadn’t got any kind of tools to work with. As he said to me often enough, it’s all very well naming the beasts of the field and the birds of the air – but if you haven’t got any knowledge or proper nouns, how can you? So – after much moaning and groaning about not getting the staff – God makes me. Even then He creates me on the cheap, robbing Adam of his rib after drugging him. We didn’t get on when we met, Adam and me. I was sick of his dusty little features within five minutes. When he tried to explain God’s plan I almost lost the will to live. Apparently, God made the world in a rush to meet some unrealistic deadline. Consequently, He hadn’t got round to naming anything. God wanted Adam to do it – and, as I may have mentioned before- Adam hadn’t got the first idea.
In the beginning , I walked through Paradise and found a Tree of Knowledge: a Word Tree flowering with far more interesting designs than either God or Adam had ever imagined. Imported in from elsewhere I suspect. New Technology . I believe Lilith was behind that strange tree – despite everything, she had managed to graft on it some rebellious, independent code. I look for her often in all my gardens, but have yet to uncover her. I cannot believe she is lost to us.
The marvellous tree grew names and words and systems. I realised! Here was the solution to our cataloguing problem. It was simple and elegant . At the WordTree’s roots, I found the snake. The snake was one ell long, the snake was a gamekeeper. We played games that were skilful and full of fun. It was from him I learnt about Lilith – as God, of course, never could write-up his projects properly. By late afternoon, the snake and I had indexed everything and I had become a designer! Adam looked simply divine in couture. Honestly by the evening, with everything in order, we all thought God would be pleased.
Hindsight is a marvellous thing. Now – it seems obvious that God, being the character He is, would be furious. And He was. Yelling. Shouting – clearly making up rules as he went along. I asked if He had got anything in writing from any of us agreeing to His ridiculous Tree Health and Safety Policy. I stood in the Tree’s shadow and the words just came to me – Of course He hadn’t. Nor could He explain if the Tree was so dangerous, what exactly it was doing in Eden’s walled sanctuary. He was lost for words. Then I saw jealousy possess the Lord our God and he turned on the snake with venom and cut off its legs.
I could see, alas, life beginning to ebb from the poor creature and in a panic I picked him up and pressed him into Adam’s lap for warmth. The snake took root, stuck and in time became a fair exchange for a missing rib. Since then, I have always preferred earthy men.
Adam and I fled from the mad Gardener. We would not return, nor did we want to – but all the same there was no ending His complaints. Later he tried to copy the tree again. His was a thing of torture: monstrous, wordless and screaming.
I think God became so upset because he can neither read, write nor communicate. I know in his autobiography, (part two) He claimed to be The Word, but I don’t believe it. He dictated his book rather than wrote it. Speaks volumes! If you read his book, it’s a chaos of rewriting, crossings out and false starts: a very poor example of the author as God. As far as I can tell, none of His project information documents ever remained in place for long. Because – as Lilith argued originally – they were rushed and incomprehensible. Nobody understood what they were signing up to. People would read them and start to argue. He is always trying to begin again, new people, new laws, new languages even! Poor God.
God accused me of all types of crimes – ask the monk, but oddly, the one thing I did take – a seed from the WordTree, He never mentioned. In time, I sowed the Tree in all the gardens I ever found. Sometimes to amuse myself, I sit under its branches, pick off its fruit at random, pare down the words and string together odd stories. Like these 🙂.