Week 3 Story: Left in the Dark

Five thousand and five hundred years. This was the sentence of exile given to Adam and Eve from God. Adam and Eve had gone against God's command and had eaten the Forbidden Fruit. Eve had been enticed by the serpent while Adam had listened to her, and now they were both fit for punishment. This punishment came in the tall order of five thousand and five hundred years kicked out of Paradise. They now had to learn how to live on their own in a place that did not account for their every need. Outside of Paradise, they took up residence in the Cave of Treasures, and here is where Adam and Eve went blind.

"What is this darkness? Eve, where are you?" exclaimed Adam.

"I am over here," echoed Eve's voice throughout the cave, "but I cannot see you."

"Losing my sight is too great a burden to take, why must I be punished this way?" roared Adam. His voiced ricocheted violently off the hard rocks. "I have already been forced to leave Paradise, and now you take away my ability to see this wretched part of the world? Will you just strip me apart piece by piece?" he implored of God, whom he knew could hear him.

God took pity and responded to Adam, "Just as the angels who obey me are allowed to live in the brightness of Heaven and not deal with the dark of day, you are also held to the same standard. Once the angel has turned their back on me and betrayed me, they are cast out of the brilliance of Heaven to the world that has darkness. For your betrayal, you have been cast out of Paradise to experience the day and the night."

Adam exasperatedly said, "Please, oh Lord, take us back into your Paradise! Take pity on us as we confess our sins! We know what we did was wrong!"

"Five thousand and five hundred years have not passed yet, as you know that is the length of your punishment. I had to command that you not eat the Forbidden Fruit or else, I would have committed sin for not warning you first before doling out punishment. Once this time has passed, I will take you back into Paradise," admitted God.

"Take heart in the fact that this darkness was not intended to be part of your punishment. This is merely what is called night. This darkness will end. Night only lasts for 12 hours, and you will see the brightness of day again. The night time was intended to be a good time for rest and reprieve from the toils of day for yourself and your children. Take night as a gift and understand I did this to help you and not to hurt you," comforted God. God then let them be in the Cave of Treasures.

Adam and Even, disgruntled by this conversation, cried to themselves in the wake of God's words. Though God had tried to comfort them, they were discontented by the steadfast choice to keep them out of Paradise. Adam and Eve stayed like this until morning came, the only reprieve to their long night.

Author's Note

This story was inspired by the The Darkness from The Forgotten Books of Eden edited by Rutherford H. Platt, Jr. I was first intrigued by this story because of the title, The Darkness. I thought this was an ominous way to bring light to this part of Adam and Eve's story. This is a retelling of The Darkness where Adam and Eve have been kicked out of Paradise and have experienced night for the first time.

Bibliography

The Darkness from The Forgotten Books of Eden edited by Rutherford H. Platt, Jr.

Image Information: Sunrise, Pexels

Reading Notes: Adam and Eve, Part B

To continue the unit about Adam and Eve, I read the story The Darkness from The Forgotten Books of Eden edited by Rutherford H. Platt, Jr. This story stood out to me from the others because of how Adam dealt with the new things in life outside of the Garden of Eden. Adam had been coddled while in the garden, so each new thing was basically a fright to him. The mere aspect of not being able to see was enough to essentially give him a heart attack. Before this part of the story, the reason he died was because it was night time, and for the first time in his life, he had to experience darkness. This was enough to fully give him enough of a shock that he just died and left Eve in the Cave of Treasures to deal with the blindness caused by darkness and his death alone. Luckily for Adam, God looked down and saw his death. Upon seeing this, God brought Adam back to life and tried to explain the reasoning for the darkness. In God's mind, the darkness was there to give life a chance to take a rest from the toils of each day. I appreciate how God explains why the darkness is not necessarily an inherently evil thing. The darkness is only temporary, and the light will come again. The light is for Adam's children to do their work, and through the light and dark there is a balance. Unfortunately, Adam does not deal with change very well, and in this version of events, he pretty much dies when something new happens that he does not like.

I like how God explains what he can for why he made the choices he did. I think this adds valuable dimension to the character and does not try to make God an unfeeling and without reasoning type of god. This shows the development and attempt at doing justice in a way that God deems as fair. This shows that God has not abandoned them, and he truly cares for them in His own way. God does try to stay with them and let them know they are not alone.

Bibliography

 The Darkness from The Forgotten Books of Eden edited by Rutherford H. Platt, Jr. 

Image Information: Darkness, Pixabay

Reading Notes: Adam and Eve, Part A

This week, my reading was from Adam and Eve from the Biblical reading options. I have known about Adam and Eve since I was a young child. I decided that reading their story again would refresh my memory, and I would have a chance to see how other parts of the world tell their story. I particularly liked how The Punishment by Louis Ginzberg (1909) was told in a way that was not as traditional as the way this tale was told in the Bible. This telling helped give more insight into the thoughts of the different characters. The characters were Adam, Eve, the serpent, and God. Walking through their punishment, the reader sees how Adam makes excuses for eating the Forbidden Fruit and following this behavior, so does Eve. This was not what God was intending, as had they confessed to their sins, the reader learns that God would have let Adam and Eve stay in Paradise.

More motive is shown behind God's intentions as well as the serpent's. God wants to truly let Adam and Eve stay, and He gives them a chance to make up for their mistakes even though they had the ability now to discern between good and evil. We also see that God is wary of the serpent, so He does not even let the serpent speak to defend himself. This was surprising to me, as this behavior seems to be out of character with God's since He gave Adam and Even both a chance to make up for their sins. The serpent's reasons for convincing Eve to eat the Forbidden Fruit to try to bring Adam's death was new to me.

I liked how this story had motives behind each character's actions. We see a play of power and deceit unfold in a way that does not go unpunished. I would like to be able to create characters that have concrete motives and desires that drive them.

Bibliography

The Punishment by Louis Ginzberg (1909)

Image Information: Serpent, PxHere

Wikipedia Trail: Persephone to Aristaeus

I was first intrigued by Persephone when I was doing an extra credit reading on the Overview of Mythology. I have heard many tales about her, but I have never sat down once and truly read her tale all the way through. I wanted to know more about the different versions of her story. I found that she was categorized as chthonic. This means "under or beneath the earth." I had never seen this word before, and I was curious as to what this meant. I really like learning new words I do not often hear, and I wish I could use new words more often. I found that chthonic can also be related to the earth which is where Gaia came into my trail. I have heard about her many times, but I have never known specific details about her. Looking more into her, I realized I have heard of her by another name which is Mother Earth. While reading about her, I saw that Gaia made Aristaeus immortal. I thought this was pretty neat because it is not every day that one comes across someone that is immortal. His name was also unfamiliar to me, so I decided I should look into him. Apparently, he is famous for the art of bee-keeping. This trail was fun to learn more about goddesses.

Image Information: The Return of Persephone by Frederic Leighton (1891)

Reading Notes: Overview of Mythology

In the reading for Crash Course Myth: Overview of Mythology, there were three videos listed to watch to get the introduction to their approach to mythology and theories they do or do not ascribe to for the videos. The video I liked best from this list was The Hero's Journey and the Monomyth. I have heard stories of many heroes growing up and the different variations of each of their tales. This video helped break down the different segments of telling a hero's journey. The main parts are when a hero separates himself from the world, trials and victories, and a return to their home. While seeing this all explained, I thought of the heroes I had grown up learning about and saw how their stories somewhat followed this progression. I am a major Avengers fan with an emphasis on Captain America, so I am no stranger to watching how their stories play out while watching them struggle to defeat the villains.

In America, I feel that we have a lack of mainstream female heroes though, so when the video brought up a tale of seven sisters, I was intrigued. Their story took a path off the traditional path of super heroes, and they were wanting to overcome hunger, pain, and fear. So this was more a personal journey to become better versions of themselves which resulted in them becoming cosmic beings for succeeding. I appreciated how the story was told in the third version. This was more of an approach of a retelling to get the ideas of the story across to the viewer. The storyteller clearly sectioned the  story into three separate chunks to show how the trend of call to action, road of trials, and returning home were relevant to this story.

Bibliography

The Hero's Journey and the Monomyth by Crash Course World Mythology

Image Information: Hero, Wikimedia Commons

Tech Tip: Canvas Gradebook

The Canvas Gradebook was a new addition to the list of Tech Tips. Apparently, Canvas updated the way they work their gradebook just this semester. Reading through this Tech Tip helped me learn a bit more of how this class is arranged grade-wise. I learned that the current week's assignments are at the top and the previous week's assignments are moved to the bottom. Luckily, each week's assignments are grouped together, so this makes finding your grades for that week super easy. I have already been referencing my gradebook a lot to make sure that I am staying on track of the assignments that are due.

Another useful part of this tech tip was that the weekly totals are located at the bottom of the gradebook page. This will help me know that I am hitting the required amount of points each week to stay on track. I am hoping to do some extra credit each week, so this will help me figure out how many points I should aim for each week to achieve any goals I may have of finishing early.

Feedback Thoughts

Feedback can often be a critical tool in progressing and growing as an individual. If there is no feedback, then there is often a lack of an outside perspective which is helpful in knowing what cannot be seen normally. In Silence the Critical Voices in Your Head, feedback is addressed as a useful way to learn how to be a better leader. This article expanded on how many people most often only address negative feedback as they see this part as the most important. I believe people do this because they think the positive aspects of their behavior that was mentioned is something they have already mastered and, therefore, do not have to work on in the future. What this leads to is only having the negative parts to focus their attention on for improvement. While this can be meaningful, I think the article brought up a valid point that people should not just brush aside the positive comments. There are pros and cons to essentially everything in life. Focusing on the positive every once in a while can become a refreshing exercise to those that constantly feel overwhelmed with the negative parts of life.

Overcoming the mind is a challenging task for those that have not already achieved it. Those who still experience struggles and new difficulties in life each day are especially prone to doubt themselves when attempting to do something new. In Seven Ways to Crush Self-Doubt in Creative Work, the author details ways to try and circumvent the self-doubt many people may feel. The author brings up how people should abandon perfectionism which can be useful because trying to be perfect can negatively affect your performance and mood. Trying to be perfect is a nearly impossible standard and those who try to meet it can often find themselves unhappy with their life situations or will refrain from attempting new skills to avoid being bad at something. This happens to me in my own life, and I hope to one day get past the perfectionism I feel is necessary to achieve everything I want to in life. Once I fully believe that making mistakes is an acceptable part of the process of learning, and not something to be punished for, I believe I will be more willing to learn about subjects that do not initially capture my interest.

In general, I have learned from constructive criticism the most when their is a clear list of what I did wrong. I try my best to do what is right, so when I have a list of skills to work on, I have a focused way to approach what I need to improve first. My most feedback negative experience happened when I was not asking for feedback, and I was bombarded with numerous negative things with no clear advice on how to fix what was wrong. This was not helpful for me as it destroyed my motivation to want to fix anything since nothing positive was listed. Moving forward, I want to incorporate more positive feedback when evaluating myself and others. I believe this will help the learning process be less discouraging.

Image Information: Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down: Pixabay