“And the Lord God formed man of the slime of the earth: and breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul. And the Lord God had planted a paradise of pleasure from the beginning, wherein he placed man whom he had formed. And the Lord God brought forth of the ground all manner of trees, fair to behold, and pleasant to eat of: the tree of life also in the midst of paradise: and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.”
The Lord then fashioned man with the mud/dust/slime of the earth, which sounds like something demeaning, but it is important to remember that all things are both good and fading. The negative connotations can lead you to consider the low, helpless estate you were in before Jesus grasped your heart, with your ability to love being as formless and polluted as mud. However, God in His goodness desired to take a low element and the height of the rational mind and put them together to make something wonderfully complex, with a body that is good and dignified and a soul that gives the body its personhood. You are wonderfully made, and even the dust of your soul before you knew Christ was watered with love, as mentioned in the last meditation. From this mixture, He breathes His Spirit of Love into you; “He breathed on them; and he said to them: ‘Receive ye the Holy Ghost’” (John 20:22). Wisdom and love were breathed into the human person, that by these two one may come to a perfection of their natural faculties, for wisdom is “the mother of fair love” (Ecclesiasticus 24:24), and Jesus, Love Incarnate, spent time amongst the elders in the temple, showing that love needs wisdom and instruction to grow to its full maturity. It is by wise love that one lives, for art requires precision and mastery rather than passion, and so the art of loving requires a gentle, insightful touch, refined by trials and experience. Now, the first people were placed in a “paradise of pleasure,” that the things of earth may be encountered in their full magnificence, without the weight of sin or shame inhibiting the wondrous things the Lord had made. Without these weights, each thing could be seen in its full beauty, from the apples of the tree to the grass of the field to the clouds of the sky to the gift of each other to God Himself: “When they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the paradise at the afternoon air” (Genesis 3:8). From the beginning, man, and by a closer look yourself, was made for intimacy with God, others, and creation; all perception is a sort of “taking into yourself” that makes your experience your own, and therefore something to be enjoyed. All things are beautiful! All things are made by the God that loves you. By your restoration to a relationship with God by nature of the state of grace, there is an invitation to return to this same paradise: A paradise in which all things draw you closer to God, deeper into love. While sin constitutes a departure from God, the spiritual life is being carried back up the mountain in the arms of Jesus, that it may be enjoyed anew with a greater appreciation of the love that went into all things and yourself. This is the “mountain in which God is well pleased to dwell” (Psalm 67:17): the world, the soul, your soul. Let all things sing to you the hymn of their beauty, enjoy the paradise that is your life, for He has placed you in the world that He was pleased to make out of love. Eternal life begins at baptism, and the state of grace puts you back in the paradise of intimacy with God, where all things show forth the goodness of the Lord: “The heavens shew forth the glory of God, and the firmament declareth the work of his hands” (Psalm 18:2). There are two trees that are particularly noted: First, the tree of life. The fruit of the tree of life is immortality and divine wisdom, which exhibit that God wants to be with you always, and wants you to “know even as I am known” (1 Corinthians 13:12). It is the nature of lovers to desire nothing but their beloved, and to desire to become all the more one with the other. Any separation, any degree in which they do not overlap, is a form of suffering, the suffering of love. God offers the fruit of knowledge of Himself in abundance: “That they all may be one, as thou, Father, in me, and I in thee; that they also may be one in us” (John 17:21), and “this is eternal life: That they may know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent” (John 17:3). To know just how loved you are, to know the very essence of love, this is life everlasting, and this was available in paradise. But there was a lesser knowledge, the knowledge of good and evil, which represents command over the moral order, something open to God alone. To eat of this fruit is to return to one’s own perception on how to love rather than following the commandments of the Lord on how to do it properly. This is to love basely or base things, and this is not the essence of love, which is the tree of life.