Rummage Sale

We are formless, nameless.

We trudge through life looking for angels.

Looking for Eden.

Because neither are immediately available, we make up our own.

Initially, we think that Mom and Dad will provide us a paradise. But the truth is Mom and Dad are not equipped to do so. In fact, they, too, are looking for it. And often, they are searching through their own torments carried from childhood through teen years to adulthood until they unload them onto us. We become beasts of burden.

Then we think that education will give us the needed direction to gain paradise. Go to school. Learn all you can. Don't you know that the more education, for which you pay dearly, the better your economic status will be one day? Statistics say so.

Hooray for statistics!

Out of school and into the workforce, we ride the expectations of climbing the career ladder. Perhaps Eden lies at the top? It must! Look at all those smiling people driving their expensive cars, living in palatial homes, vacationing in the Caribbean for much of the year.

Yeah!

But, wait. There are long hours of unfulfilling work. There is numbing boredom found in repetitive tasks. There are stresses from unreasonable expectations, and, for the most part, we end up slaves to someone else's search for Eden.

So we try church. After all, that's where we first learned of Eden. The church must have the answers. It surely must know.

And we go to church. And the church gives us recipes. Add a pinch of prayer, a lot of love, stir in a tenth of your income, do this, don't do that, act like Jesus - what would He do? That's if the church actually believes in Jesus. Many don't.

Some churches say that it's not about the rules, but the relationship. Unfortunately, this creates a whole new set of rules and recipes. We take those recipes and try to bake our Eden cake.

Too bad, the cake fell flat.

Because we think that it takes a certain number of genuflects to achieve Eden, and because that number seems to be an ethereal secret known to no one, not even the Pope, we give it what we consider a fair shot. It's no wonder we fail.

Maybe we can find Eden if we only look inward.

Some things certainly feel like Eden for a while.

Sex, drugs, alcohol.

Fantasies in the dark.

Yet, with all their promise of enlightenment, of ecstasy, they don't remain in our systems. So, it's more and more and more and more and more and more and more... until

Crash, disease, obsession, insanity, destruction.

Death.

Or repentance.

To trudge back up that weary hill looking once again for Eden.

We are formless, nameless. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

They are living in a fantasy.