Eve’s perspective on that opposition.
[Marie:] Adam and Eve were the first people to receive the Atonement. They were also the first parents to know the love a new child brings, the soul-stretching sacrifices of raising a child, and the agony of watching children unwisely use their agency.
What I have to share with you will feel like an abrupt change in tone, but this poem by Arta Romney Ballif (a sister, by the way, of President Marion G. Romney, one of the founding fathers of BYU Law School) takes us into the heart of marriage and family life as they began on this earth. Take a deep breath and come with me into Eve’s world as she probably saw it. The poem is called “Lamentation.”
And God said, “BE FRUITFUL, AND MULTIPLY—”
Multiply, multiply—echoes multiply
God said, “I WILL GREATLY MULTIPLY THY SORROW—”
Thy sorrow, sorrow, sorrow—
I have gotten a man from the Lord
I have traded the fruit of the garden for the fruit of my body
For a laughing bundle of humanity.
And now another one who looks like Adam.
We shall call this one “Abel.”
It is a lovely name, “Abel.”
Cain, Abel, the world is yours.
God set the sun in the heavens to light your days,
To warm the flocks, to kernel the grain.
He illuminated your nights with stars.
He made the trees and the fruit thereof yielding seed.
He made every living thing, the wheat, the sheep, the cattle,
For your enjoyment.
And, behold, it is very good.
Adam? Adam
Where art thou?
Where are the boys?
The sky darkens with clouds.
Adam, is that you?
Where is Abel?
He is long caring for his flocks.
The sky is black and the rain hammers.
Are the ewes lambing
In this storm?
Why your troubled face, Adam
Are you ill?
Why so pale, so agitated?
The wind will pass
The lambs will birth
With Abel’s help.
Dead?
What is dead?
Merciful God!
Hurry, bring warm water
I’ll bathe his wounds
Bring clean clothes
Bring herbs.
I’ll heal him.
I am trying to understand.
You said, “Abel is dead.”
But I am skilled with herbs
Remember when he was seven
The fever? Remember how—
Herbs will not heal?
Dead?
And Cain? Where is Cain?
Listen to that thunder.
Cain cursed?
What has happened to him?
God said, “A FUGITIVE AND A VAGABOND”?
But God can’t do that.
They are my sons, too.
I gave them birth
In the valley of pain.
Adam, try to understand
In the valley of pain
I bore them
fugitive?
vagabond?
This is his home
This the soil he loved
Where he toiled for golden wheat
For tasseled corn.
To the hill country?
There are rocks in the hill country
Cain can’t work in the hill country
The nights are cold
Cold and lonely, and the wind gales.
Quick, we must find him
A basket of bread and his coat
I worry, thinking of him wandering
With no place to lay his head.
Cain cursed?
A wanderer, a roamer?
Who will bake his bread and mend his coat?
Abel, my son, dead?
And Cain, my son, a fugitive?
Two sons
Adam, we had two sons
Both—Oh, Adam—
multiply
sorrow
Dear God, Why?
Tell me again about the fruit
Why?
Please, tell me again
Why?
[Bruce:] Eve. Mother Eve. Your sorrow and your faithful questions bring a hush across my heart.
Father Lehi gives us the doctrinal context for understanding Eve’s experience. He tells us that if Adam and Eve had not eaten from the tree of knowledge they “would have remained in the garden of Eden” and “they would have had no children; wherefore they would have remained in a state of innocence, having no joy, for they knew no misery”—experienced parents will see a little connection here: no children, no misery!—and further, “doing no good, for they knew no sin. . . . Adam fell that men might be [mortal]; and men are [mortal] that they might have joy.”32 So, paradoxically, sin, misery, and children create the context for learning what joy means—a process made possible by the Atonement of Jesus Christ.
Marriage, Family Law, and the Temple, Bruce C. Hafen, Emeritus General Authority Seventy
January 31, 2014, Speeches.byu.edu
