Abby's Alley

Years of weaving, Of passing shuttles, Of tightening strings And approving Unravels. Divinity is pulling Another string loose. Pinned up patterns Inspired by extracts Of others’ lives, Visions of utopia Fantasies of prosperity, Glamor and honor Burn. Divinity ignites Another to ashes. But I take up the paints To continue my masterpiece. So Divinity takes up her sponge To wash away freshly laid color. “Not what I wanted!” I protest. “Not what I wanted,” she replies. “Undoing my work!” I cry. “Doing my work,” she says. “But what of my happiness?” I ask. “Of what makes your happiness?” she asks. “It all hurts too much,” I object. “It all hurt too much,” she says. “Then what will you do?” I submit. “What I do,” she declares. Then Divinity takes up her pen And writes in my stead.

The peoples were scattered. Their gods were many With whims and needs to countervail. And mankind placating While making and begetting To the hum of old grandfather’s tales. “Remember two trees,  A flood and a tower, And a lost angry  god  l ong ago. Remember our mother  Banished from sanctum For taking what all want to know." "Remember the pelts,  Sewn to hide shame. Then shameless  murder from spite, Boasts of worse butchery Declared war law And shameless might would make right." "Then waters rose up Teaching fear to the clans Dread the God and dread the gods Who ask for blood And ask for grain Fear calamity they bring with the rod. Thus lived Abram and Sari until . . . “Abram, it is I, the god. Leave family. Come follow me, And I will show you a land Which you'll possess And you, I'll bless.” But when rain failed to fall And food was scant To Egypt they went. That ruse turned pharaoh 

My friend’s son knows how to tell time. And he knows all the names of the dinosaurs at the Discovery Science Center. He knows his alphabet both by sound and sight. And I think he can count up to a hundred. He is three. The girls in Lee’s preschool know how to match Ff to the picture of the fish and Hh to the picture of the hippo. Who knows, maybe they also know how to match the Kk to the picture of the knife. They write their names so neatly and color within the lines. And I start to scramble for important things to teach my children at home since I’ve taken Lee out of preschool. I take an afternoon to teach Lee how to enter my iphone’s emergency mode and call 911. We do a practice call to the police department and I realize Lee doesn’t know his address. We review that for a day by walking up and down the block pointing at the address numbers painted on the curb.  I print out the food pyramid one afternoon when Lee refuses to eat his meat. We name the trees and plants when

I have been studying Genesis lately. And through studying, I’ve been finding answers to questions that have puzzled me. With the aide of John Walton’s NIV Application Commentary, I’d like to present some of the answers that have made sense to me. Question 1 based on Genesis 2-3: If God, being all-knowing, knew that Adam and Eve were going to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the first place, why did God put it there? Isn’t that rather like dangling a carrot in front of a rabbit’s face? An Answer: Yes. That would seem so. But what if the tree of the knowledge of good and evil wasn’t a tree at all, but the symbol used to describe what kind of life God offered Adam and Eve in the garden. “You may live in this garden with me, and I will teach you day by day about what is good and what is evil. Or you may choose to try to understand what is good and evil without me. I’m telling you now, don’t try it that way. That way leads to death.” The tree, though perhaps