Dear one,
As is my wont, I found myself giving thought to the word: “together.” As you might guess, in doing so I discovered that “together” is derived from the verb “to gather.”[1] Thus, when we speak of “gathering together,” we draw nigh to saying “to gather to gather,” but of course such is not our meaning. For the second “to gather” functions as an adverb, indicating our desire for unity or oneness, a reminder that we are apart.
However we understand the Adam and Eve account, it profoundly underscores that very strong Judeo-Christian tradition, namely, that we were created for community. All of us have been born into community, even if, at our birth, that community is only one individual, who must devote hours, days, months, and years to our nurture and growth, if we are to live. (Even Roman legends asserts that Romulus, the eventual founder and king of Rome, was reared by a community, albeit of wolves.)
For those of us steeped in Western thought and culture, for those of us who prize our individualism, we tend to break everything into its constituent or individual parts; nonetheless, often we are confronted with our need for community. Recently I recognized this truth, when a stabbing neck-pain sent me to the ER, whereby dear, loving family members did for me what I could not do for myself, even as a highly trained and experienced medical community provided for my physical healing—a community dependent upon a much broader, “political” community, which has established and funded an extensive social net.
Likewise, Mary, my wife, and I experienced much the same, when she broke her ankle. In this experience, our family and friends, and our church family stepped in to provide for us, and their provisions we received most gladly. To our responses of sincere gratitude, we regularly heard: “Well of course. What are family and friends for?” Indeed, what? and yet, when we Americans visit other national/cultural settings, often we are struck by the rich, intricate net of personal-familial-communal relationships, which reveals the sometimes-poverty of our own relationships. We recognize that we are not together; rather, we are disparate cogs spinning on our own.
If Adam and Eve were the first community, by their choices that family, that community fractured. No longer were they together; instead, they inaugurated the blame-game, as graphically and painfully seen in the next generation and Cain’s defensive question: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Because the human story, our story, has continued their legacy, Jesus then formed a new family, a new community based upon He Himself and those who sought to do the will of God. “Whoever does the will of God,” He said, “is my brother and sister and mother” (Mark 3:35). Admittedly, the “new family” identified as the church, has continued the relational patterns of the “old family,” but I take solace in the fact that “the new” is evident within “the old,” when love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control surface (Galatians 5:22-23). When these occur, we are together.
Of the family,
Stan
[1] New American Oxford Dictionary.