My reinterpretation of the story of Adam, Eve and the forbidden fruit:

"It dawned on me one night how screwed up the story is of the Garden of Eden, or I should say, how the interpretations of the allegory are wrong and have led to so much that has been and continues to be wrong in this world, particularly sexism. It occurred to me that so called 'original sin' is quite the opposite. It is curiosity; it is thirst for knowledge not just of things, but of what is the best way to handle life, which some idiots turned into right vs wrong and good vs evil. Then it occurred to me that the tree of knowledge is Earth and the tree of life is Heaven. Then I googled and the Kabballah is the closest to my thought as it has the tree of life as 'the tree of souls.' I was listening to Aloha Ke Akua and the line 'in the image of God' caught my ear, and I started to wonder what the uncorrupted meaning would be. It could certainly refer to souls, and to a baby; after that life takes over — only a newborn is created in the image of god and newborns do not display any masculine vs feminine. Newborns are divine innocence.

In other words, the creation story and the part about eating the fruit and being banished from Eden had its basis in reincarnation as told to me by Rama, which by the time the creation story got written down, had been completely mangled, as have the words 'created in the image of God,' which have been misunderstood and have led to the patriarchal anthropomorphism of God, which has exacerbated male chauvinism.

Interestingly, while Googling Adam and Eve tonight to refresh recollections for this piece, I see that Pope Francis, speaking to a large crowd in St. Peter’s in April 2015, reportedly said:

'The image of the rib does not in any way express inferiority or subordination, but on the contrary, that man and woman are of the same substance and are complementary.'"