Tooni Alabi is a third-year English Literature student who has enjoyed her degree in the way it’s helped her explore different periods and a range of writings, thus shaping and re-shaping her perspective. Tooni is an avid reader of different genres and hopes to be an author one day. Her passion for reading has translated into a love for creative writing, and she desires to help others escape through her writing and bring them closer to God.
Garden of Eden
Tonight, there was a shift in the heavens. The spirit of God felt the pangs of contemplation and sorrow growing wilder, causing the incense of nostalgia to rise and cloud the atmosphere. The memory becomes more potent, its voice amplifying, conjuring the essence of the Garden. The memory plied him with the fragrance of soil and flowers. It heightened the sound of the soft grass blowing in the cooling breeze. Then it brought him to his knees with the picture of his cherished creations living harmoniously in paradise. The call of the spirit moves the moon and the stars, causing them to discard their night watch, instantly becoming rigid sentinels at the creator’s service. They turn and are moved to compassion as they glimpse the first tears of God’s grief on display. Tonight, heaven’s sonorous worship is silenced. The spirit feels the beginnings of calm and allows nostalgia to appeal to the King.
Nostalgia knew what Eden meant to the creator, hence the intensity of the images it brought to the forefront of God’s mind. It wasn’t as though he hadn’t thought about Eden and visited it since the fall. Heavenly beings could never forget anything because that is how they’re wired, but wasn’t this an opportune time to revisit it? Eden needed to be evoked because the lost paradise would soon be restored, and not everyone would be a partaker of the gift. Things were rapidly changing on Earth, as the birthing pains grew stronger daily, signalling the glorious second coming. Darkness these days was ever present, a phantasmic monster that covered humanity, but there were people and places the darkness could not overcome the light, the light shining brighter and brighter. Nostalgia knew that these final days would be a violent war as heaven and hell jostled for souls. Nostalgia knew her manifesto rang loud and clear; there needed to be a renewal of strength for the final push to get as many people back to Eden. The past was just as important as the future, but she couldn’t decipher what God would do. Was he going to visit Eden? She only intended… well, to start something, but had she gone too far? Then he arose from his throne, and she bowed before him. As quickly as he had arisen, he was gone.
As I approach the gate of Eden, sadness and joy stir within me. The sadness reminds me of the fall of creation who were never meant to leave, yet I had to banish them for breaking the cardinal rule not to eat from the tree. When humans hear the story of the Garden, they believe I was cruel, ruthless and every other word under the sun because Satan was liberating them, whereas I chose to hide them in darkness. They think I hid them in the darkness because of my jealousy. I wasn’t truly a loving father otherwise, I wouldn’t have withheld the gift of knowledge of good and evil and clearly, I desired their lowly state. Yet in time, they would have had access to the tree, because the knowledge of good and evil was important for them, but it would have destroyed them without my guidance. However, that fairy tale was stolen because they allowed Satan to poison them, and they selfishly used their free will to acquire that knowledge. Do you think their disobedience was worth the detrimental consequences? Their actions unknowingly unleashed sickness, death, evil and more, causing the world’s deformity and giving Satan access to the world.
My heart stops at the untouched beauty of Eden. I find it exactly as I left it, frozen in time. Every piece of creation is temporarily stuck in the past. Majestic birds in mid-flight, lions halted in their steps, the grass’s sway unfinished, causing it to look unbalanced. Then my eyes find the willow tree, the conversation between its strands of hair left unfinished. I gently place myself underneath the tree, feeling the comforting touch of its bark against my back. The need to close my eyes overwhelms me. My memories swirl around my mind as though I’m about to drink in fine wine. I inhale. Then I drink from the cup of my memories.
Archangel Michael intently follows the display, but he doesn’t have to look into the mind of God to know how the Garden of Eden was before and after the fall. He will always remember the presence of Lucifer. He could sense him before he saw him. He spent the currency of time in his presence not just because he was the person who conducted Heaven’s worship, but because they were friends. Even the word friends felt insignificant for the centuries they had spent together. No matter how hard he tries not to think about it, he circles back to his betrayal. The stench of pride and its hateful look had already consumed him, before the warning could leave his mouth, he fell from the heavens along with the others. His fall was quick but slow, in the word of God it describes it as lightning, but for him it felt like an excruciating eternity. He chose to initiate a war, but they were no longer allies but enemies. On that day, he infiltrated in the guise of his slithering body, and he took pleasure in breaking God’s creation. That day, another set of friends were felled by the unseen enemy of disobedience. Another friendship that refused to be satisfied with God’s presence and decided to look elsewhere. As soon as Eve plucked the fruit, it reverberated through all creation, for a moment it was in free fall, and as she ate, creation fell, gravity crashing humanity down into damnation. His face was unacquainted with tears until the fall, and after tears and sorrow became his burdens.
Adam, Eve, Satan, and the tree are the main characters in the tragedy, appearing like apparitions from my mind’s graveyard. The countless times I’ve revisited this memory, it’s always been in bold and vivid colours; the tree’s green leaves heightened, Adam and Eve’s facial expressions exaggerated, and Satan a villainous carnival master with his deep hypnotic voice and chameleon eyes as he weaves his elaborate tale. He tells them to eat and discard their lowly mortal state, and fulfil true immortal power. Each word is venom corrupting their heart, and with it, the memory alters, becoming hazy watercolours in different shades of blue. I remember my intensified awareness that day, a defence mechanism preparing me for the inevitable. Then the moment arrives. He wins, marked in his triumphant smile as they both resolve to eat the fruit. My tears cloud the remaining images that flitter past my eyes as the grief of a fallen paradise overwhelms me. My beautiful and most important creation was shattered, and sadness sealed my heart.
I open my eyes and blink away the tears as hope flows into every crevice and fracture. My beloved son, the ultimate arrow in my quiver, as he destroyed Satan’s plans on the Cross of Calvary, everything in my word led to his arrival. He conquered hell, death and the grave, restoring the passageway to me. Some have used the passage, and others have left it abandoned. The war between being your god, relying on other semblances of religion or surrendering to a God you can’t see and trusting in the good and bad times. I stand, leaving Eden behind, knowing in time it’ll be the meeting ground between every nation, tongue and tribe for all eternity.
The moon turns away from heaven as his creator sits upon his throne. His gaze now wanders a bit further tonight as Satan crosses his mind; there are always shadows of him on Earth, but they’re all smoke mirrors hiding the real figure. His eyes abandoned searching for him, but he knew he was there, his desire for destruction palpable.
Satan evaded the moon’s illuminating beams. In a rare moment of pondering, he refused to feel ashamed of his actions because he knew it was always better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven. His eyes began to betray him as they overlooked the Earth and rested on heaven. He was intoxicated, and he couldn’t bring himself to look away, though he had been away for centuries; there was that part of heaven within him that refused to die and yearned to be reunited. The yearning grew stronger as Archangel Michael came into focus, and he remembered the friendship they once had, but more than that, the first time they faced each other in battle. Horror, disgust, and disappointment flashed over his face in seconds, more damaging than any weapon. He shook the memory away because hell was his true home now, where he delighted in torturing souls for eternity, the satisfaction of watching God’s fragile creatures beg for a God that they rejected. Hell was the embodiment of his revenge and a worthy adversary against a selfish God. However, in Satan’s intoxication, he locked eyes with the creator himself, and now he couldn’t look away. The eyes of God roamed over him, and dread paralysed his body as flashes of his imminent destruction flashed before his eyes. The words ‘Your days are numbered’ registered in his mind before he was thrown back into darkness.
by TOONI ALABI.