Garden of Eden

God creates heaven and earth, then he lets light be there, makes Day and Night, creates animals and finally creates man. God does this in six days and rests on the seventh, as we may well know. So God puts man in a garden called Eden in which lies the tree of knowledge of good and evil (bit of a long name, if I may say so.), and tells him not to eat from it because the day he does will be the day he dies. Oh, and man's name is Adam. That's kind of important. From this man, God creates woman, named Eve. Then a snake who is actually Satan in disguise shows up and convinces Eve to eat from the tree, and then Eve convinces Adam to eat from the tree, and then God's mad because they disobeyed orders and curses woman with painful childbirth and also makes it so man in general has to kill to eat and experience disease and whatnot. God banishes Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden lest they eat from the tree of life and become immortal.

My origin story is that I'm from Lexington, Kentucky, born and raised. My family hails from England and Scotland and Ireland and Germany, and then my grandfather swears we have a decent amount of Cherokee/Latin American in us (though we're hesitant to believe him.) (Not that Cherokee and Latin American are mutually exclusive, it's just that my grandfather changes which one it is every time he says something about it.) My family's religious but I'm not a religious person. I like to think that one's origins do not have to dictate one's life or what one does with their life.

Garden of Eden

Genesis Chapters 1-3. To me this is one of the most popular and recognizable parts of the bible. Genesis means "origin", which is fitting because it is the very beginning of the bible and the beginning of time. God created the heavens and the earth, and all of his creations took seven days, culminating in his resting on the seventh and final day. He created man and woman to take care of and multiply the earth, but after they are deceived by the serpent, God bans Adam and Eve from the garden and makes aspects of their life miserable, since they chose to disobey and not be of God anymore. No matter who you are, you've probably heard the story at least once before.
For me, I've heard it many times before. I was born in Cleveland, Ohio and grew up in a strongly religious household of two parents and two brothers-one that is 4 years older and one that is 10 months younger (we were born in the same year). My family and I moved from Ohio  until finally settling in Lexington, Kentucky when I was about two or three. Seeing as how I don't remember living anywhere else but Lexington, I consider myself being "from" here and claim it as my hometown (although my dad-born and raised in Cleveland-doesn't agree sometimes). Growing up, my family and I regularly attended church on Sundays, and it was in Sunday School where we every year we would learn about the book of Genesis and other bible stories. I am very grateful to have grown up in a very religious as it gives me constant faith in having God to believe in. Aside from church I was also high involved in orchestra and gymnastics. If you know me at all, you know how obsessed I was/am about gymnastics and how I can't shut up about it once I get started talking about it.
Genesis 1-3 shows how the beginning helps map out the future, what with Adam and Eve's mistake cursing their future. I've had a pretty simple beginning of life, and I can't wait to see how it plays out in my future, which hopefully won't be cursed..

Garden of Eden

Okay, so here's how all this creation stuff went down according to Genesis. God just up and created the Earth and Heaven one day. Why? Who knows! God ain't gotta explain himself to you. But anyways, it was all dumb and boring. So then God made light, and land, and plants, and seasons, and the sun and the moon and stars, and then birds and fish and land mammals, and finally humans. Then he patted himself on the back, because WHOA MAN, he just created EVERYTHING. In SIX DAYS. I'd pat myself on the back after that too. So then God made a huge garden thing with a tree of knowledge in the center and stuck the one dude he'd made in it. "Yo Adam," God said, "Don't eat the fruit from the knowledge tree. It'll F you up." Then God made Adam name literally every animal. But Adam was lonely, so God knocked that punk out, ripped out a rib (ouch, wtf God?!), and made a lady. And then some snake convinced Eve to eat and Knowledge Apple, and she gave one to Adam too. Then God got pissed and cursed the snake to crawl around, and cursed women to painful childbirth and serving man, and cursed man to hard labor or something. Then he made them wear clothes and kicked them out of the Garden.

Okay, first off, this is sexist as heck. It's basically saying that every hardship we have is a woman's fault, because women are weaker-willed and should therefore serve men. Seriously? Not to get all controversial here, but that's a load of BS. Also, ya got a big obvious gap here with evolution and whatnot. I could go on and on with the analysis, but everyone's heard all this so many times, considering Genesis is apparently so fun to rip apart and analyze to death. The main thing you should get out of all this is that God thinks ignorance is bliss (hence the withholding of the fruit of knowledge).

My origins have nothing to do with Genesis. I was created not by God himself, but by two people from Michigan, through a process I'd rather not think about ever. I had pretty much no religious upbringing apart from my parents handing me an illustrated children's Bible once I learned how to read and told me to figure it out myself. I also... saw a snake get chopped up by a lawnmower once? ...Yeah, I don't know where this exercise is supposed to be going, so I'm just gonna stop before I dig myself any deeper.

The Garden of Eden

The Garden of Eden--it is, of course, the story of how the world was created.  We're all familiar with this classic story of Adam and Eve and how our world came to be.  In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth; he took seven days to create light and dark, sky and earth, sea creatures and birds, livestock and plants, and eventually, man and woman.  He places the man and the woman, Adam and Eve, in the Garden of Eden, where all kinds of trees grew, trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food.  One tree in particular, however, God told Adam and Eve never to eat from, for they would "surly die."  A clever serpent was able to trick Eve into eating the fruits from this tree because this tree gave knowledge of good and evil to anyone who ate its fruits.  Once Eve shared the fruits with Adam, they both became more aware of good and evil, and God punished the two of them and the serpent for what they had done.

This story makes me wonder:  how was my world created?  Where do I come from?  I know immediately that my father grew up in Hackensack, New Jersey; his mother's mother immigrated to the United States from Russia.  My mother was raised in a little town called Henderson in North Carolina.  (Wow, a city boy and a small town girl?  Are they livin' in a lonely world?  Did they take the midnight train goin' anywhere?)  I was born in St. Louis, Missouri, but was raised in a suburb of Atlanta, Georgia.  I'm pretty sure that I'm a northerner raised in the South, and I'm a city girl at heart.  I moved to Lexington at the beginning of seventh grade, and I'm not going to lie--I hated it so much.  I didn't like the people, I didn't like the town, and I really just wanted my city back; I wanted to go back to where I came from.  Though my opinion of Lexington now is nothing like it was back then, I do think that my city "origins," so to speak, have stuck with me.  I fully intend on going somewhere big where I know I'll fully completely comfortable.

Origins - Evan Caldwell

The first three Chapters of Genesis are some of the most analyzed text in the history of the world, and rightly so. The largest and most central question to humanity has been and still is "Where did we come from?" These chapters propose one of the many theories, and is one of the more popular ones, especially among Americans. This story starts out with God creating light and dark, then the Earth, then the animals, and finally man. God is particularly pleased with his creation of man, and decides to then form a woman. He names the man Adam, and the woman Eve. Once he has created all of the universe, God rests. Subsequently, Adam and Eve are tricked into sinning against God by Satan in snake form, and they are banished, damning generation of humans for generations to come. This is one of the most important stories in the Old Testament of the Bible, and has always been involved in much debate and controversy.

My origins are basic (not to be confused with the new "cool kid" variant of the word). I was born in Lexington, and I have lived here ever since. As far back as I know, my family comes from Whales, meaning that I indeed am the next Gareth Bale (soccer). I'm as Kentuckian and white as anyone can really be. I come from a long line of Christians, and I too identify myself as a follower of Christ. Thus, I am connected to the first three chapters of Genesis by virtue of my faith. To me, the story of the Garden of Eden contains the answer to the question of human creation, making it essential to my understanding of other big questions, like the meaning of my life.

One interesting variant of this story is that there was a creature similar to humans, a female, that God created first, but then, when the Bible was translated into other languages, the story was altered by men, afraid that women would use the real story to gain social and political power.

Garden of Eden

Genesis 1-3 is a story pretty much all of us have heard- the story about the beginning of the beginning when God created the Earth in six days and rested on the seventh and he created Woman from the rib of Man. God looked at what He had created and thought it was good. And then Eve took an apple from the tree that they'd been specifically told not to eat from which ended up in their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Whether we've heard it at Sunday school or on a documentary or in a discussion on the radio, we've at least heard the gist of it. The first three chapters of the Bible tell the story of creation and the story of original sin. 

Usually, along with this story of creation comes some debate. As I went to Catholic school up until 8th grade, I didn't hear or learn any other creation story until then. I later learned that many teachers are cautious about teaching evolution because it completely contradicts the one told in the first three chapters of Genesis. This second "creation story" discusses evolution and how our brains and our bodies have evolved to be higher functioning creatures. 

I was born in Bogotá, Colombia. I come from a long line of "campesinos". I lived in Colombia for the first seven years of my life until my parents decided that we were going to move to the United States. I didn't realize it then, but that really changed me and the way I was raised. I lived in South Carolina until 2009 when I moved here. I grew up in a very catholic home and attended catholic school until we moved here, where I attended Winburn.  

My Garden of Eden.

As the well-known creation story goes, God worked for six days and on the seventh he rested. In the meantime, he created man and because man was bored, God created animals and woman. Now, a snake approaches the woman tempting her to disobey God and eat the Apple of knowledge of which she does. This woman, Eve, offers the apple also to the man, Adam. They both eat and understand that they are naked. God then enters the garden cursing their actions and what they have done.

My origins aren’t nearly so dramatic. I was born and raised in Lexington, Kentucky where I have been lucky to meet my best friends and meet many family members. As a young girl, I always loved stuffed animals and they were all girls, even though one was appropriately named Mr. Cow. When I was three and a half, my parents and I went on sabbatical for a year in Austin, Texas where I learned that I had a love for spectacular food and fantastic celebrations. I remember little bits and pieces from that trip and I won’t ever forget them. We moved back to Lexington and have been here ever since. I feel that I have been lucky that no snake has yet tempted me into disobedience and hopefully it never will.