We know He rested.

But did He sleep?

The original sleep of the righteous, we might say… and if He slept, did He, perchance, dream? With the act of creation still fresh in His mind, of what might He have dreamt, we wonder? Perhaps the same things that any of us, created in His image, might have dreamt: His work, naturally, and His children… His hopes and dreams for them.

He would have hoped for them to be fruitful. He might have hoped for them to be civilized. Perhaps he hoped that they would take the materials He had surrounded them with and create marvels of their own.

Maybe in His dream, he brought forth a new land from the ocean. An island, perhaps, teeming with people who exemplified the best of His hopes. We might imagine that they built graceful cities of impressive spires, that they studied the natural world and learned of its mechanics, that they constructed great ships and traveled across the face of the globe.

And perhaps His dream would be more substantial than yours or mine. Perhaps it would be more real.

Such an island, if it existed, would have been the envy and inspiration of ancient civilizations the world over… but being a dream, it would of have no hope of lasting. God might have slumbered, but He did not sleep forever. What was created on the seventh day could have been snuffed out just as quickly, the great island sinking beneath the waves in a single day and night of misfortune… if it had ever been there to begin with, of course.

Being a dream… even a dream of the divine… one suspects the record would be hazy.

I wasn’t listening to the snake. I was listening to the tree.

The fruit called to me… it sang to me. God made man from dust and breath, but He didn’t put any music in us. He didn’t think to. When He put the tree in the garden, He didn’t realize how it would sing. God sees everything else, but He doesn’t see music, for the same reason fish don’t see water.

People have asked me about the fruit. They ask it all the time, actually, when they first get here. I understand… the way it’s written down, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. It looks like the snake talked me into it way too easily.

That’s God again.

He was telling the story, of course. He didn’t know about the music, didn’t know what it did to me. Living in water, He didn’t realize how thirsty we could get.

Sometimes people are angry with me, even after I explain.

They think I ruined things for everyone. They think it’s my fault that they suffered. They’re not really mad, of course. The worst part’s over by the time they meet me. But they still want me to know that they blame me. There’s nowhere else to register a complaint, here, and not much to complain about.

It’s just a habit that some people carry with them.

Nobody ever thanks me. Nobody ever asks me if it was worth it.

If I could go back and do it all over again, I think I’d do the exact same thing. I like to say that I would have spent more time in the garden first, but I know that’s bullshit. I ate the fruit because I couldn’t help it, because it sang and because it offered relief for a thirst I didn’t know I had before I heard it. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.