In “Returning to Eden” Heather Hamilton explores the overarching theme of the Bible that was first introduced in the creation story, Genesis 1:26-27, “Then God said, ‘Let us make humanity in our image to resemble us so that they may take charge of the fish of the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the earth, and all the crawling things on earth.’ God created humanity in God’s own image, in the divine image God created them, male and female God created them.” [CEB]
From there she moves through numerous images, stories, thoughts and ideas in the Bible, freeing the various stories from the overused and abused literal understandings that many evangelical Christians have settled on and opening up the metaphorical and allegorical intentions that point to the understanding that in each of us lies the essence of God and therefore we can live into our original goodness - indeed supreme goodness - proclaimed in that creation poem. Genesis 1:31, “God saw everything he had made: it was supremely good.” [CEB]
Some people have difficulty with the word, “myth” seeming to equate it with a fairy tale. Actually, myths are some of the most powerful, albeit mystical, creations in our attempts to understand our involvement and interaction with all of creation. A myth is created to attempt to get beyond and underneath the realities of our world - to make what we are not able to put into words become more understandable. To dismiss a myth because it can’t be explained easily with what we know to be “true” goes against the purpose of creating myths in the first place. A myth is an attempt at a key to a deeper understanding of reality. Heather Hamilton’s book helped me to a deeper understanding something about this process, something I have been working on for some time.
The author goes into great detail proposing that this inherent supreme goodness is still in every human being (what she calls the “True Self”) but has been inhibited by our focus on the surface of our being, our “False Self,” but is still residing in each of us if we were to look deeper into our being. I admit to being a little frustrated in the repeated use of those two terms which seemed, to me, to occasionally distract from the importance of what she was proposing. That seemed to disrupt the flow of her argument at times but I kept wondering what would be next in the wonderful unwrapping of the real intention of the words recorded in the Bible, to give a challenge to us today to make the world a better place and a hope that this is in our potential to do so. But as I continued to read, I began to understand that the repeated use of these two terms was necessary to prepare me for what was to come. I needed to become fully aware of the dual nature that exists in order to embrace the reality that is offered.
While I occasionally wondered at how she seems to desire to interpret the metaphorical sayings recorded in biblical texts to fit her proposal, e.g. saying that this is what Jesus really was saying or what Paul was really saying in his various letters, I applaud her desire to unpack the words too often taken too literally and too often used to control the followers of various religious sects. The depth of her probing into the texts to make the words to breathe life potential into mere words in a book, enables each of us to explore the potential for heaven on earth - what, in my opinion, is what Jesus proposed over and over again. We can indeed Return to Eden - to the wholeness that we have too easily allowed to shatter.
As a retired pastor, I eagerly followed Heather’s exposition, nodding in agreement to truths I have been struggling to bring forward that shattered many of the too easy explanations and myths I had been guilty of teaching. The fact that Jesus taught in similes, metaphors and allegories revealing the wholeness contained in each of us encouraged me to look even more deeply into the stories and lessons not only in the New Testament but in the entire Bible, digging beyond the literal readings to lessons that apply to our lives now. Heather helped unwrap a recurring theme that is too often disguised as just another story. Her book reveals that not only is there more to the Bible than we might have thought, there is more in you and me than we have dared to experience. If we can just make the attempt to shed a little of our “False Self,” more of our “True Self” can enable us to draw closer to a “Return to Eden.” In Luke 4:23 we read, “Physician, heal thyself.” “Returning to Eden” is a very helpful tool for that process. I’m in.
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This is a book that companions the modern consciousness
Reviewed in the United States on March 24, 2023
This is the book I was searching for. None too late, it arrived. I read "Returning to Eden" slowly, deliberately placing each chapter next to the concerns of my inner life, which, more recently, I have begun to process in earnest.The book’s subtitle “A Field Guide for the Spiritual Journey” is well chosen. That’s the way I experienced it. As a guide.I am compelled by Heather Hamilton’s story and the way she arranges the text to create an ongoing dialogue between her life as a reader and seeker and the lives of those who have sought to live a life of integrity before her.I copied several passages from the book down in the way I do only when significantly moved.“Faith is the courage to show up for and surrender to the process of transformation in all its stages and iterations” (pp. 47).One of the things "Returning to Eden" does especially well is locate the coordinates of a spiritual migration that’s been afoot in Christianity for some time and yet undoubtedly has been accelerated by the ubiquity of the Internet. I’m not always sure how to regard the evolution of technology and the web’s instant, seemingly limitless reach, which increasingly changes the way we think, communicate, and perceive; but (to quote Flannery O’Connor) “possessed by the modern consciousness, that thing Jung describes as unhistorical, solitary, and guilty,” I can’t not be changed by it.Heather Hamilton’s "Returning to Eden" is a book that companions the modern consciousness because, like so many others, it is the story of what it means to risk a life of integrity.
Reviewed in the United States on March 24, 2023
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