The full measure of the loss that we--as created beings--might experience would be our universe itself. Our surroundings are that against which we measure ourselves. Every conceptualization we might have is rooted in our experiences, and every experience we have occurs in the universe we imagine exists.
The so-called Great Religions of the World have decreed that there is a larger reality than that which we can describe, or can even experience this side of the grave. We call it humility to accept this view, and we call "paganism" any belief system that treats a created thing as a god. A mountain is not a god, it is a place where a god dwells; no, wait--it is a place where we go to speak to a god; no, wait--it is a place we approach while an anointed few go to speak to a god; no, wait--it is a holy place itself (its "mountain-ness" being but a representation of its function as a portal); no, wait--it is all mountains or none (being itself just a representation of the potential of communion with God.)
The mountain, then (the "thing" that we must be careful not to worship) becomes all things or nothing--depending on what kind of grasping for the transcendent has seized us at the moment. This sort of wild tension is apparent in the gospels where, for example, one moment the Children of Abraham (in the form of the depicted audience) are described as the unique and irreplaceable brood of the Patriarch, and the next moment it is said that such a brood might be conjured from the stones.
The upshot of all this is the reality that not only can we not possess the mountain (or possess our imagings of a god perched on that mountain), we cannot even possess our conceptions of "mountain-ness"--because all aspects of creation (and therefore all of our imaginings) are but phantasms. To deny this is paganism (describing a debased religious tendency of whatever faith), and this contention can be demonstrated easily enough in the Christian world. It is a small matter each spring to find church message boards that say something like, "The birds are singing . . . the flowers are blooming . . . God did it again!" Of course it would be just as accurate six months later to write, "The birds are freezing in the gutters . . . God did it again!"
The point is that the rhythms of life--those cycles and pulsings that we associate with vitality--are really manifestations of death. God did not intend reapings and sowings, but rather continually smooth and unfevered blessings. It is in the context of our post-Eden faithlessness and vile cravings that Jesus assails us at one moment with anxious want, and the next moment with creaking harvests. And all along we are hounded with recollections of the inevitability of death--such recollection being death itself, as Adam was promised.
Adam was given the breath of life, and then he--and we--were given to know the lack of it. This really holds for all of life. At some moments we know the nearness of death, and then we are distracted by events or drawn as usual into seemingly-normal routines, and we draw these breaths--both literal and figurative--as though they are our due. They are not--they are overdrafts against accounts that can be called in at any moment.
This is the most pernicious danger of Christianity--or of any of the great religions of the world: the effectual paganism of worshiping a God congratulated simplistically for the design of this world--a world that is not as God intended. We are still the creatures that God made, rather than some essential post-Edenic re-design. That is the nature of the curses. We are as we always were, thrust awkwardly into surroundings that are not only inhospitable, but phantasmagorical.
We were never meant to understand this universe. God help us whenever we believe we do.
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