Introduction (bulletin notes)
Garden Lost is about the Fall of Mankind, a story told in the very beginning of Genesis, the first book of the Bible where the first people God created made a choice that separated them from God, a choice that shut them off from the spiritual reality, leaving them able to see only the physical or material world, a world and system which became their preoccupation and to which they were bound.
The lyrics bring us some fresh observations. For instance, our senses for the physical were not active until after the Fall so presumably this is not the way we were supposed to function before the Fall and perhaps we can extrapolate and say it isn’t likely the way we should expect to operate in the hereafter! The lyrics call us to consider the role of time, temporality and choice. In addition, the music examines the mismatch between the way mankind tends to behave overall as contrasted with the capacity we can see in ourselves for greater things … so that man in his fallen state presents a paradox to himself. Why do we often know the right things to do but can’t do them? Is it not surprising that some think human nature is good and others think it’s bad, and others think that good and bad don’t mean anything and it’s all meaningless?
And even in this so-called advanced age, why do so many still search for help in a spiritual sense, sending out “signals SOS”, which of course means “save our souls”. The last movement leads to a view of how in reconnection to God we can be good, but separated from Him we can be the worst of all His creatures; and only when we harken back to Him does any semblance of meaning start to emerge for us. But just as in the Genesis stories no explicit answers are provided …only hints…relying on later parts of the story to fill in the picture.
Lyrics
Garden Lost, Movement I
Heavenly Garden…
so luscious and serene
And grace abounds around us
with righteousness and joy and peace
Every tree around us
Bearing fruit so good and sweet
Filling our hearts and souls with …
Life, like a parent and a newborn child
Life, like the earth’s moon we shine forth light
So vital and overflowing,
Majestic and outward flowing, love
.......
Heavenly Garden…
Glory and wondrous
Fading from my sight
My eyes are open, yet I am blind
Did I see a mirage or was it just a dream?
Or was the dream my life and now I sleep?
I feel time commencing as the moments come
They push me forward to a time
I don’t want to go
I fear the dark uncertain place ahead of me
Oh how will I choose?
I search my fading memories
now recall my Help is gone
and we’re all alone
Can this ever be undone?
.......
So now I must focus to survive in this place
And what I really am is lost to my view
And only see what’s making me
I search my fading memories
now recall my Help is gone
and we are all alone
Can this ever be undone?
* * *
Garden Lost, Movement II
Work and sweat to make it through the day
Play and sing, together cling
and raise the young
On and on we fill the time
And see and want and grab and fight
Live in fear and sleepless nights
.......
Yet through the fog we catch a glimpse,
A shape of something possible
Images of kindness and bravery and love…
Though we try we can’t break free
Now the darkness has a hold on me
Though we try it cannot be
Made for better but can’t alone,
bound by chains we cannot see
Futility undermines any sense of meaning
Vanity…we’re all alone.
.......
Stranded on an island
We are searching for a rescuer
All eyes on the skyline
Searching the skies and
sending signals SOS…
***
Garden Lost, Movement III
Searching far and wide for answers
What I see is a puzzle full of holes
But the picture…
it hints of answers so sublime
And this world,
it has no meaning sitting on its own
But bring back the long, lost garden
and the lights begin to glow
.......
little lights shine so bright
chase away the gloom
like a lighthouse in the darkness
safety in the storm
like a lighthouse in the darkness
guiding me home.
Composer's additional notes:
Garden Lost is about the Fall of mankind, – the first people created by God, who made a choice that separated them from God, that shut them off from connection to and ability to see the spiritual, able to see only the physical or material world …
And if we look carefully at the clues, we might glean some view of our basic design so to speak, which might suggest how we should be, or may want to be, living, and may help us see how we fit in a bigger picture beyond ourselves. Man presents a problem to himself and is greatly infected with the need for meaning.
In terms of some of these clues to watch out for, by way of example, we are told that until after the Fall, Adam and Eve’s (physical) eyes were not opened nor were they aware of their nakedness. In such a state they could not have been heavily focused on living after physical things but instead likely more on spiritual and soulish things - though it does show that they were already equipped for existence on earth after the Fall (i.e., showing His foreknowledge of how things would play out), but til then lying dormant or of a very secondary nature.
And I think the primacy of the soul in the garden -- with the physical likely for reliance in the post-Fall world – should help us understand how we should prioritize things in our lives once reunited to Him through Christ. In this regard, Scriptures like Romans 14:17 start to make more sense to our minds: “…for the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.” Similarly we can better grasp why the physical things are not of primary importance after the resurrection: Recall that Christ told us that the flesh profits nothing (John 6:63), that in the resurrection there will be a new body incorruptible (1 Corinthians 15:35-54; Romans 8:23; Philippians 3:21) and no one will marry or be given in marriage (Matthew 22:30). In fact, even now, in Christ, in the spiritual reality, which is here and now, there is no male or female or gentile or Jew (Galatians 3:28). So, in terms of priority, though all that God creates is good, it’s less about the body, our gender, our ethnicity, etc., and more about living souls and our relationship to God, and not the body or the mind set on itself, the flesh or the world. Now this isn’t to say that male and female roles can be ignored or that the body is not important while we are here. But understanding role, priority and so on, can be very important to better understanding Truth and responding in faith.
In measures 24-29 the melody signifies the negative events of the deception and Fall. And beginning in measure 30, we see Adam and Eve losing their memory of the Garden. They are dead to God, dead and blind to the spiritual reality, but are seeing and beginning to operate from the physical with which they were equipped but which had not been in significant use before then.
As part of this slipping away into the physical world, in measures 37-45 the lyrics speak of mankind finding itself in a temporal reality. God is eternal but He’s created our reality out of material things that exist in the space-time continuum. Why is that? In the temporal we are always standing in the present moment with the future fast approaching, and we must choose – and even not choosing has consequences that can have drastic effects on us. I think this picture plays an important role in understanding what follows the Fall, that impacts God’s plan of restoration for mankind, ideas we will approach in the later pieces. For now, mankind’s memory of Him, memory of life with Him and of His qualities, largely disappears and gets confounded with fables and myths. We feel all alone here but we must get on with efforts to survive. We lose sight of who we really were and are meant to be (i.e., souls alive to Him, made to serve Him, to cleave to Him) but seeing predominantly the physical, the body and the world and the things in the world. They see it enough to ask “Can this situation be reversed or undone?”
The second movement starts in measure 73: now almost everything about the prior life in the Garden is gone. Adam and Eve have been fruitful and multiplied in the physical sense. All the people are similarly unaware of anything other than life in the natural: work, sweat, play, sing, together cling, and self and selfishness is a powerful motivation and orientation.
Yet in moments of self-reflection, mankind presents itself with a paradox – leading to a serious debate about his own basic nature – good or bad – and even whether there is any meaning to our existence or in the universe generally. How can we have such disagreement about our very nature?! Beginning in measure 95, people can see in themselves shadows of a capacity to be better, to be part of something higher. But how come it appears we ought to be able to do better, and in fact we have examples of those who do! And we often know what we ought to do, isn’t it true that if you survey the best belief systems of mankind you will see agreement about many things that are seen to be good and to be admired and pursued… yet when we look at our history and the state of the world we can see we are so unable to do them? We try and try in our own strength but we can’t do it or at least haven’t found out yet how to do it. And thus the disparity of views on human nature, which also feeds the conclusion of others about meaninglessness and their conclusion that nihilism describes reality. But I think the Fall gives us the best explanation: with God we can shine forth light. But alone we can be the most evil of creatures. Meant to be good via His enablement and provision, yet after the Fall, alone we are infected with selfish craving and are living with a confusion generated by the inconsistency between our sense of right and wrong and what we are capable of doing by ourselves.
In measure 111 the concept of futility and vanity are lightly introduced but they become the theme of the third movement. Despite the inability to find meaning in this place and state, we present a problem to ourselves: we are something more than the physical stuff, the dust, from which we are made, but then who are we, what’s our place, our purpose, our role, and so on? We see enough to infer and deduce that there must be something beyond this place. We sense that we are stuck here and that there’s something more, so many are seeking Someone or something to rescue them.
So the third movement begins around measure 132 and it is basically the story in Ecclesiastes too. The world, and everything and activity on the world, -- on its own -- is vanity. On its own, the world has no meaning. Imagine a sandbox filled with oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, iron, etc. (instead of sand), and see things in that sandbox made from those elements. In fact I can imagine myself in that sandbox and see my body and brain (which generates my soul – my mind, will and emotions) comprised of such stuff. How can the sandbox or its contents provide meaning to me? It really can’t. Not til I see the role of the sandbox and who made it and why! Thus this earth provides me with a big picture of the puzzle I seek to understand but there are massive parts of that puzzle still missing, hidden from view.
But meaning begins to come into view when I look beyond the physical to the spiritual. Here I allude back to the Garden and all that it implies – things explored in greater detail in the next songs.
But before moving into the music and to the themes of the next songs, there is one important building block I want to introduce now. We know the story as told in a colloquial way: God said don’t eat any of those apples or you will surely die. What was it about that apple? Was it a poisonous apple, containing a poison that would kill the body? Was the point about simple disobedience: that apple is like any other thing but I am telling you not to do it and if you do, We’re done? In other words, if they had eaten other fruit of the same kind from another place but this one was prohibited so the point was about Adam and Eve’s personal obedience? Which leads into a deeper mystery: what if Eve had gotten confused about which tree and thought this was not a prohibited tree or apple… was this a crime by way of the act regardless of the state of mind? Let me suggest that it wasn’t about any of these. In Genesis 3:6 we are told that when Eve “saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise” she took from its fruit and ate… I think the point of this is that what happened goes to the effect on the human heart: a craving for something, for self-ish gratification -- that separated the craver from God. The description of what appealed to Eve has an interesting correspondence to a famous admonition of John contained in his first epistle, 1 John 2:15-17:
15 Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world. 17 The world is passing away, and also its lusts; but the one who does the will of God lives forever.
Like plants in a garden, what we take in affects what we bear. Which is an indirect way of saying what we take into our hearts affects the state of the heart which then gives rise to good or bad, with the bad defiling us. Throughout the Bible God’s primary focus is on our hearts… so Garden Lost begins with a description of a spiritual garden, and spiritual trees that fill their hearts with spiritual life…until we get to the temptation and the Fall…