Christmas in the Land of Nod, East of Eden

In the Book of Genesis, Cain was banished to wander for his crime in the Land of Nod, East of Eden. The Star of Bethlehem was the only way back to a State of Grace.

Christmas by Fr. Gordon MacRae

At Thanksgiving this year, we recommended a post entitled “The True Story of Thanksgiving: Squanto, the Pilgrims, and the Pope.” It was more of a history lesson than a typical blog post, but it got a lot of notice. It is said that history is written by the victors, not the vanquished, so my take on Thanksgiving was unusual. It was told from the point of view of Squanto, the man I credit with the survival of the Puritan Pilgrims who — for better or worse — were the spiritual and cultural beginning of the first colonies in the New World.

Please indulge me in another brief foray into history — this time, Biblical history. I just can’t help myself. We can’t understand where we are until we discover where we’ve been. In the Genesis account of the fall of man, Adam and Eve were expelled from Eden as both a punishment and a deterrent. They disobeyed God by eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. So God cast them out of Eden “lest [Adam] put out his hand and take also from the Tree of Life, and eat, and live forever.”

They were cast out of Eden to the east (Genesis 3:24). God then placed a Cherubim with a flaming sword to the east of Eden to bar Man’s return, and to guard the way to the Tree of Life. Whether this is history, metaphor, myth, or allegory matters not. The inspired Word of God in the Genesis account tells us something essential about ourselves in relationship with God.

A generation later, after the murder of his brother Abel, Cain too “went away from the presence of the Lord, and dwelt in the land of Nod, east of Eden” (Genesis 4:16). The “land of Nod” has no other reference in Scripture. It represents no known geographical name or place. The name seems to derive from the Hebrew, “nad,” which means “to wander.” Cain himself described his fate in just that way: “from thy face I shall be hidden; I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth” (Genesis 4:14).

The Aggadah — a collection of Rabbinic commentary, legend, and anecdotes accumulated over a thousand years — expanded on the Biblical account. The “mark of Cain” imposed by God was a pair of horns. According to the Aggadah legend, Cain’s great-grandson, Lamech, had poor eyesight and shot Cain with an arrow believing him to be a beast. There was a sense of “what goes around comes around” in the Aggadah version.

In Genesis, Cain’s descendant, Lamech, became sort of a counter-cultural anti-hero seen as the epitome of the moral degradation of blood revenge. Lamech killed a man for wounding him. “If Cain is avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy-sevenfold” (Genesis 4:24). Cain’s murder of his brother, and his banishment East of Eden, set in motion a ripple effect of epic proportion.

I have long wondered if the banishment of Adam and Cain “east of Eden” is a divinely inspired metaphor for man’s fall from grace, a state of being, more than a place. Jumping ahead way ahead — the Magi of Matthew’s Gospel came to Christ from the east (Matthew 2:1). They “saw his star in the east” and followed it out of the east — out of what is now likely modern day Iran, a story I told in “Upon a Midnight Not So Clear, Some Wise Men from the East Appear.”

I envision the Star of Bethlehem to be a sort of beacon leading the way out of the darkness of the east, the darkness of man’s past, out of the spiritual wanderlust set into motion by Adam and Cain. In the Tanakh translation of the Jewish Scripture — our “Old” Testament — Psalm 113:3 is translated, “From the east to the west the Name of the Lord will be praised.”

Family Values and Woke Politics

Some of the prisoners I see each day are aware that I write weekly for Beyond These Stone Walls. Those who had a recipe published in “Looking for Lunch in All the Wrong Places” invited their families to read that post. Several others asked to read a printed copy of “The True Story of Thanksgiving” and it’s been circulating here a bit. Just a few days ago, a prisoner I do not know asked me if the “Squanto story” is true. Squanto’s plight in my Thanksgiving account caused an interesting reaction, and seemed to inspire discussion about how to best cope with shattered dreams and hopes, with loss and the fall from grace, with life in the land of Nod. The prevailing thought has been that Squanto responded to his bitterness and loss with sacrifice. The irony of what Squanto did is not lost on prisoners.

Captured by a British ship and nearly sold into slavery — his life in ruins and everyone he loved destroyed — Squanto chose to come to the aid of the only people worse off than Squanto himself: the hapless pilgrims who stepped off the Mayflower in winter, 1620. Some prisoners conclude that they need to be more like Squanto. Many of the men around me have lives that spun out of control through drug addiction, poverty, selfishness, rage, or greed. A lot of people imagine that prisoners are just evil, brutal men incapable of considering anyone but themselves. The media’s portrayal of prisoners as brutal, manipulative and self-involved accurately describes only a very small minority.

Evil men do exist, and prisons everywhere contain them, but they are not typical of men in prison. Most men and women in prison simply got caught up in something, made mistakes — some very grave — but are no more evil than your friends and neighbors. Some would give anything to atone for their crimes, to take back the wrongs they have done. Some were victims before they were victimizers. Most are guilty of crimes, but some are not.

Many of the younger prisoners are just lost. There’s a clear correlation between their presence here and the systemic breakdown of family — especially fatherhood — in our culture. There is an alarming number of young prisoners here who have had either abusive fathers or none at all. There is a direct and demonstrable correlation between the breakdown of family and the marked increase in prisoners in our society. For the evidence for this, see the most-read post ever at Beyond These Stone Walls, “In the Absence of Fathers: A Story of Elephants and Men.”

Puritans and Empty Pews

Recently, the Pew Research Center published the results of a study that identified the most and least religious areas of the United States. The study based its conclusions on surveys with parameters such as professed belief in God, participation in worship, the importance of religion in daily lives, and the practice of personal prayer. Mississippi, Alabama, and Arkansas were the most religious states with mostly Southern states rounding out the top ten. In contrast, the six New England states were at the very bottom of the fifty states in religious identity and practice. It’s ironic that the Puritans settled New England in 1620 desiring to build a religiously based society free from Catholic influence. The Puritans wanted religion, but not a church. They wanted religion free of Sacraments and symbols, free of any magisterial teaching authority, a religion of the elect. Over 400 years later, the community they established has now been identified as the least religiously influenced region of the country.

In the Pew study, New Hampshire placed at the very bottom — 50th out of 50 states — with a population professing any sort of religious belief, practice, or a religiously informed value system. In inverse proportion to the influence of religion on its population, New Hampshire now leads the nation in the growth of its prison population in ratio to its citizen population. Almost predictably, it also currently leads the nation in drug overdose deaths among people ages 16 to 54.

In 1980, New Hampshire had 326 prisoners. By 2005, the prison population swelled to 2,500. Between 1980 and 2005, the New Hampshire state population grew 34 percent while its prison population grew nearly 600 percent in the same period, and without any commensurate increase in crime rate. Anyone who is not alarmed by this statistic doesn’t understand the relationship between religious values, family life, crime, and the abandonment of young people to wander east of Eden. Among young men now in the New Hampshire prison system, the recidivism rate is a staggering 57 percent.

There’s a compelling argument here for the preservation of family and the restoration of religion in the American public square. There are far better ways for our society to invest the billions of dollars it now sinks into new prisons. The population in the land of Nod east of Eden is growing fast.

Christmas Gifts

It’s not all gloom and doom. In New Hampshire, at least, there is an emphasis on programs and rehabilitation that present an avenue toward redemption. In the journey out of the east, there are some prisoners who stand out, and their journey is most clearly expressed in their art.

On the eastern end of the Concord prison complex is a workshop known as HobbyCraft. There, prisoner-volunteers make some 1,000 toys per year for the U.S. Marine Corp’s “Toys-for-Tots” program. Several prisoners gifted in woodworking take part in the Toys-for-Tots project each Christmas. They donate their time, their talent and their own materials to create high quality toys and other wood creations for this project.

Among the prisoner-artisans is Mike, a 55-year-old man who has been in prison for over thirty years. Mike has donated his prodigious skill in woodworking for the Toys-for-Tots program. Here are two of his most popular creations:

If there has ever been anyone in your life for whom you have lost hope for redemption, then take some time to read the story of Pornchai Moontri told in “Bangkok to Bangor, Survivor of the Night.” Pornchai’s story is a great example of the connection between conversion to a life of faith and rehabilitation.

Before Pornchai left prison for Thailand in late 2020, he spent his time studying theology through a scholarship program at Catholic Distance University. His creations in the HobbyCraft center have become legendary. Pornchai has mastered the art of model shipbuilding, and was designated a Master Craftsman in basic woodworking. Here are some of his most popular creations:

Two of the magnificent ships he designed and built last year were donated after being featured at the annual Newport Arts Festival. One of Pornchai’s creations was a replica of the U.S.S. Constitution. He carved and fitted each of its over 600 parts, and spent some 2,000 hours on the design, construction and rigging.

One of the first edicts in the Puritan’s Charter for their settlement in New England was to prohibit any observance of Christmas. As these and other prisoners have demonstrated on their journey out of the east of Eden, Christmas became very real after their Advent of the heart.

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Note from Fr. Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post. December 8, the Solemnity of the Assumption honors the Immaculate Conception, and four days later on December 12 is a most important Feast Day for the Church of the Americas. Honor our Mother by reading and sharing,

A Subtle Encore from Our Lady of Guadalupe

You may also like these related posts linked in the post above:

The True Story of Thanksgiving: Squanto, the Pilgrims, and the Pope

Upon a Midnight Not So Clear, Some Wise Men from the East Appear

In the Absence of Fathers: A Story of Elephants and Men