This poem is a reflection over the lives of 3 of the churches early fathers and their problematic relationship to human sexuality. Origen castrated himself for the kingdom, Augustine converted from a life of "sinful pleasure" to a kind of suppressed erotic spirituality. And Peter Abelard was a gifted theologian who ended up falling into a sexual relationship with the young Heloise, whom he was supposed to be teaching theology. When discovered, Abelard was involuntarily sterilized and Heloise was sent to a nunnery. The song speculates on how these 3 may have inadvertently infected all of western culture with a kind of schizophrenic relationship to human sexuality and our human nature as embodied beings. The song plays with the idea that this may be the true "Origen-al sin", and not that one that happened in the garden. It ends with a prayer, playing on a famous expression by Blaize Pascal, another would be father, and with a yearning to "return to Eden" and an original embodied innocence. My friend tells me this is all too much to pack into one song. Maybe so. It is what it is though.
