When I think about God arriving in the Garden after the Fall, I think about Jimmy Carter arriving at the base of Mount Saint Helens after the eruption. It’s just fifty miles across the river, Mount Saint Helens, and on a clear day you can see it from Portland. And I remember seeing Jimmy Carter getting out of his helicopter, the belly of the helicopter caked in mud, the sides of it gray with ash. Carter stepped down from his seat, his expression confused, troubled, all the pain of a region mapped in the lines of his face. And later, when I was twenty-one, I went to the place myself and tried to imagine it then. I imagined Harry Truman at Mirror Lake, refusing to leave despite the warnings. I imagined two thousand feet of this once great mountain coming down on him, sliding him and his lake over the next mountain and down the other side, displacing the body of water altogether. There were tremors, only a month of them, hardly a warning for a mountain that had sat dormant for a hundred years.
A few years ago I drove up the winding road in my car, the fresh mountain air wafting in through the windows and swirling around in the backseat, the tall pines lining the road like statues, the round, tight corners walled on one side by cliffs and the other side by thousands of feet of descent, down to a blue river bright like a mirror through the canyon, shining silver and white over rocks, then back to blue in the pools, casting up against the same-colored sky. It was all so beautiful, I remember thinking. And then I hit the spot on the road where the trees stopped, and the landscape went dead, like the landscape after Hiroshima, as though the place had been bombed. There was no life, not a plant, not a tree, just gray ash flowing across the hills for thirty miles toward the crater.
I rounded the long steeps toward the visitors’ center, which sits on a neighboring hill, the few green trees around which were the only life on what seemed to me an ugly, dry planet. And this is precisely how I began to feel, that I was no longer on earth, that I was in some other orb with some other climate and some other ecosystem, all of which was the product of some tragedy, as though the people who inhabited this place were destroyed or, if they lived somewhere out there in the ash, were walking around in a daze, having suffered a kind of concussion, trying to make a life in the ruined landscape. The placards at the door said ash had been carried as far north as Canada. Spokane, some three hundred miles away, was deluged with more than three feet of ash. Rivers were dammed, others created, and some of the rivers, filled with walls of ash and water from Mirror Lake, took out bridges with their muscle. The Columbia, the lifeline to this region and the second largest river in the United States, was shut down completely as ash brought the bed to only twelve feet.
My friend Danielle said she encountered the sight in the parking lot after church. She was a little girl then, walking out of the sanctuary holding her father’s hand and staring confusedly as a mountain she and her family had known all their lives, some fifteen miles away, spit a plume larger than the cloud over Nagasaki, going up into heaven like some angry burst of earth. They must have thought the world was coming to an end.
All this makes me wonder what God must have felt, arriving on the scene just after the Fall, knowing all He had made was ruined, and understanding at once the sacrifice that would be required to win the hearts of His children from the grasp of their seducer. I see Him in my mind walking the paths, calling to the couple, meeting their eyes for the first time, and Adam and Eve shaking in absolute terror, wondering what had happened, confused at the broken promise of a snake, feeling at once the trustworthiness of their first love and wondering if God would ever love them again, feeling the hot breath of His anger and emotion, hearing Him speak for the first time, not as a friend, but as One who had been betrayed. “Who told you that you were naked?”
This passage was an excerpt from Searching for God Knows What.
So I read this and I was completely captivated by the imagery. I was standing there at the base of the mountain. I was driving down when you hit the wasteland. Then you hit me with the imagery of the fall of man. Actual tears came to my eyes. It was beautiful yet heart-wrenching at the same time. Thank you for sharing this. I’ve got some stuff to think about for today.
About a year and a half ago, I was waiting in the Seattle airport to fly to Chicago. A problem with the plane left me stranded, so the airline flew me on one of those tiny commuter planes from Seattle to Portland, where they connected me to Chicago. That little plane flew right over Mount Saint Helens, and the pilot alerted us to it over the intercom. Looking down, we could see logs still in the water, the trail of devastation, everything. I was amazed, because I’m just a twentysomething; Mount Saint Helens was something I read about in a textbook in school.
That experience flooded my mind when I read this post today. Just as I viewed the scars of that tragedy all this time later, so we still have the scars of humanity’s fall.
But I guess the good news is that this, too, shall be made right.
I think we (and by ‘we’ I mean ‘me’) too often brush over the devastation of the fall because it is all we know: living in a fallen world. It is good to be reminded of what was lost. During this season of lent this is a timely reminder.
i think you meant advent not “lent”.
You’re right! Thanks for catching this.
“All this makes me wonder what God must have felt, arriving on the scene just after the Fall, knowing all He had made was ruined, and understanding at once the sacrifice that would be required to win the hearts of His children from the grasp of their seducer.”
Fortunately for humanity, God saw all of the future devastation before he created anything. He knew when he said it was all good that we would soon screw it all up. And he planned to sacrifice his son for us before he breathed life into Adam. God was not surprised about the fall. Jesus was plan A, not plan B.
Excellent writing–felt like I was right there : ) I don’t remember this part of the book…thanks for sharing. Good thoughts!
Great post, Don. Isn’t it a gift that we get to see glimpses like that? How there’s beauty still from ashes? I know for me it humbles me, fills me with awe, and makes me long for the promised restoration.
I had a similar experience in a Costa Rican forest this past April. It was Eden on Earth. I was full of joy and kept envisioning Adam and Eve running around in the forest naked. But then my mind jumped to an image of the two decked out in fig leaves, hiding behind a tree, and God seeking them out, asking “Where are you?”–it gave me chills to think of the sin, separation, shame and sense of utter loss that the Fall introduced into Paradise. How could something so beautiful and teaming with life suddenly become so bleak, cold, and lonely? It was a real glimpse like I don’t think I have ever had before—like your grey ash of Mt Saint Helen’s against a blue Washington sky. I blogged about it a bit and of course some friends commented that I must have been enjoying some Costa Rican mushrooms –but joking aside– I do think experiences like that show us we do walk on sacred, though scarred, ground and we walk alongside a forgiving, giving, loving, all-knowing, compassionate God…and that beautiful reminder is an unmerited gift.
I love Searching for God Knows What, Don, and appreciated the post.
I met Harry Truman who lived at Spirit Lake while I was in high school in Portland area. My younger brother and I were actually out looking for Bigfoot. It had long been understood growing up in the NW that if Bigfoot existed…he would be around Mt St. Helens and Ape Caves. The forest around Mt St. Helens was the most dense forest I have ever encountered. The trees were huge and I might add the most amazing forest land in the Northwest except for the NW corner of Washington State.
On the first summer after the Red Zone was opened up around the mountain, I drove up there alone. I was 20. I did not see another car the entire time on all the devastated back roads. It was the most eery thing I have done alone. I remember standing in the most desolate place I came to that day . . . not far from Spirit Lake and thought about the 68 people who refused to heed the warnings. We all new the North side was growing …. bulging . . . ready to do something unlike we had ever seen. And people refused to pay heed. That is our heritage. A people born from people who would not listen.
I have led nearly 200 people to the top. It’s a “summer must” if you visit the NW and love to hike. It’s now a hike to the top, and the last I did it from Monitor Ridge took me 2 hrs. 51 minutes from the car. Its only a climb in the winter.
Sorry for dismal spelling and clarity.
You have such a way of describing this that I felt like I was there, both at the mountain and after the fall. Thank you.
I agree with Josh P. The Lord knew from the foundation of the world that we would fall. However, beautiful imagery regardless! I can safely assume that even in God’s foreknowledge, the captivating imagery you described of the betrayal felt is accurate. I was also able to put myself in Adam and Eve’s shoes. The lyric of Hillsong’s “You Hold Me Now” comes to mind, “..No hiding, You hold me now”. Great entry from a superb book!
Don, your post today struck me. Your words here resonated with me strikingly:
“And this is precisely how I began to feel, that I was no longer on earth, that I was in some other orb with some other climate and some other ecosystem, all of which was the product of some tragedy, as though the people who inhabited this place were destroyed or, if they lived somewhere out there in the ash, were walking around in a daze, having suffered a kind of concussion, trying to make a life in the ruined landscape.”
I am one of those dazed and confused people right now, trying to figure out what the hell just happened. I became extremely unwell a couple of years back with a really bad depressive episode. I literally felt like I was living on a moonscape, without color or feeling, totally disorientated, and terrified. I was lucky, I had good supporting friends and family, and understanding church, and a very smart psychiatrist who quickly clicked as to what was happening, and the medication took affect quickly and successfully. Happy ending.
Seven weeks ago my oldest brother took his own life. I knew he was unwell and struggling, we all did, but none of us realized he was that bad. He’s gone, leaving a wife and six year old son, and all of us behind. He never got church, he rejected it in his teens and never saw how the way we had always done church had any relevance to life or God. I think “Searching For God Knows What” would have made sense to him, I wish we could have talked about stuff like that, making sense of God and being human outside of the small box we call ‘church’.
Maybe I’ll write about all this someday Don, but I’ll need to find my bearings first, and find the ‘shalom’ that the archetype Adam and Eve too lost when chaos crashed back in on their world. Meantime I’ll wait for the ash to settle, for the color to come back, for the calm to return. I’m waiting on God, he’s out there somewhere.
Bless you Don.
I’ve climbed St. Helens 5 times, as well as the surrounding peaks. with each ascent I’ve found a new perspective on its desolation and beauty.
What strikes me most deeply is the fact that St. Helens’ beauty is a unique beauty among the Cascade volcanoes. It bears deep scars, but us also a testimony to the unbelievable restorative power that God has hardwired into nature.
St. Helens has lost the beauty of Eden, that’s true. But it’s growing back into the beauty of resurrection, a beauty that would have been impossible without its death.
Don, I’m curious as to what tour company you used for your Machu Picchu tour. I desire to experience the hiking and camping like you did versus the typical tour. If your willing to share, great! If not, I honor that. Thanks! Stephanie
Wow. I’ve never experienced the Fall from God’s perspective. It is powerful, compelling and intense to consider divine heartache. I think it helps – empathizing with God draws us to our Creator. Thank you for this beautiful passage.
I remember the first time I read this, in the book, I hadn’t seen the comparison coming. And it made sense to me. It reminds me of an investigation I did into the Hebrew words used to describe the chaos on the earth prior to the Flood. So much of it sounded less judgmental and more torn up at the absolute moral destruction…and the cost it was inflicting upon the quality of life for humans. I see this here too.
You make it sound to me like the fall of man took God by surprise.
Surely he not only knew about it but also accommodated it.
As surely as that child could see Mt St Helens from the Church car park, God could see the cross from the trees in the garden.
what a great perspective on the fall. Thank you for helping me see it with new eyes.