The people who bought our house didn't have the money to fix up the dam, so it's gone, and with it the millpond and the top 15 feet of the waterfall whose noise used to lull us all to sleep --the best sleep a person could have. The house is shabbier now; they repainted it grey, but it desperately needs another coat (not an easy job!) I see they've let the meadow go, and the old apple trees are rapidly subsiding under upsprung sumac and alder. It won't take long for the meadow to fade back into the woods. Only the roses along the stone wall out by the road are the same --still the most fragrant roses you could ever imagine, the palest pink opening up to pure white. They haven't changed at all.

If I won the lottery I could, I suppose, buy the place back, rebuild the dam, clear the meadow, paint the house white again. make it back to what it was when I spent my childhood summers there. In theory I could make it all the same again--but only in theory. I can't go back. I'm not the child I was 30-some years ago, running barefoot across the soft grass, playing croquet with my sisters, reading in the hammock, dabbling in the cold Dell Brook, staring lost into those green, green woods.

I can't go back because I am human, and we humans are in time, and our time runs ever forward, never backward, a fact we really don't like very much--especially the inevitable conclusion. Not one of us really wants to grow up; not one of us wants to age, or die. Not one of us wants change. We want to go back to Eden. But we can't. And there's the rub.

At some level, we're all looking back over our shoulders to the entrance of the garden, where the angel Time stands with a sword in his hand, barring us from what we remember as blissful ease and simplicity. And at some level, we always refuse to believe that the angel just won't move. We always believe, in a corner of our secret souls, that if things just changed a little--if I won the lottery, if the liberals stopped changing the church, if you could just lose that 15 pounds--we could go back to what looks like the safety of home. And we want so badly to go back, because Now looks so difficult, dark and unknown, and Then looks so easy. and carefree. When I lived in that house, ran on my bare toes through that grass, I knew nothing of income taxes and working with difficult clients; I wasn't responsible for a home and a family. I wish I could put it all down, and go back to that simplicity....

But we can't go back to Eden.

And would it really work, going back? I can't go back to childhood, but even if I could, I doubt if I'd find it very satisfying now. In fact, I think I'd probably resent it like hell. Looking at my own children, I realize that the happiness of childhood, like the sanctity of the Early Church, has probably been grossly overrated. Come to think of it, the Early Fathers were probably looking wistfully over their shoulders, back at a time when questions were less vexing and answers were surer. The Golden Age was always Then; it has never, never been Now.

It's funny; we never seem to remember the boring afternoons of childhood, the powerlessness, the other kids' teasing, the anxiety. When we look back to some snug Arcadia of unchallenged, simple faith, some ideal period of pure doctrine and orthodoxy, we forget that the Early Fathers also didn't have antibiotics or refrigerators or human rights legislation or police services and the Early Mothers died in their thousands in childbed. We want some of the past (the apparent simplicity) and some of the present (the mod. cons.) but we tend to forget that we can't have it both ways.

We can't go back to Eden. We can only go on to Zion.

But we don't want Zion. We want Eden. We don't want things to be better; we want them to stay the same. How would I feel if I'd stopped at the corner of the two roads and looked at my old house, the place I'd loved so dearly, and instead of this shabbiness, I saw it transformed into something better? If I saw fine flower gardens, new shutters, the meadow planted with fruit trees, the barn converted into an artist's studio, would I have been any happier? Be real. It isn't the welfare of the place I truly desire; it's to have it back as it was when I was young. I don't want new wallpaper in my room; I want the old soft-grey paper with yellow primroses, stains and all.

We know Eden; we don't know Zion. How will we fit in there? Will it be as comfortable as Eden was? Will there be rules? Will it be safe? I can describe Eden; I can remember it, the look and feel of it, the smell of the air; I can see those woods and hills in my mind's eye, remember the brook every time I see water on stone. What can I say about Zion? I've never been there. Maybe I won't like it, all those cherubims on thrones, when what I want most of all is my own home country. How will I even know it's Zion? What if I'm wrong, and what I think is Zion is some non-Zion? I don't even know what to look for. I'm afraid I'll guess wrong, and then where will I be? In neither place. In a third place, called Trouble, lost and alone.

But time, for us, runs only forwards, on to Zion. Whether or not we want it.

God bids us on to Zion, saying: I, who am timeless, made Time for a reason, and put him at the garden gate with his sword, barring your way back, out of my great love and deep knowledge of you. Trust me; I will not lead you wrong. If you thought the glory is all behind you, it's because you can't yet see what I have in store.

Let go of Eden, says the Lord, release it, for it is not god; I alone am God. Let it go and walk on. You can take the risk because I hold you in the palm of My hand. Over the hill, there may be adventures, and I will not promise you a total absence of dragons. You will not always find the Journey easy. But you have My grace and promise with you. You have only to trust yourself to the Spirit's keeping, and step out rejoicing.

Walk on, says God: walk on, my child, to Zion.

(for KP)