Meeting Adam

It must be because it’s the last thing I see every night before I go to sleep—a photograph by the Very Rev. Andrew Tregubov of the Anastasis (or “Descent into Hades”) icon fresco by 20th-century Russian iconographer Gregory Kroug. It must be the sight of Adam’s face looking up at Christ’s, and Christ’s face looking down at Adam, that gave me the dream I had a few weeks ago.

I dreamed of meeting Adam in heaven. He wasn’t hard to recognize. In fact, he looked like my great-uncle Harold—“Bubby,” as great-aunt Sally called him—with the weight of his long years melted off. This was indeed a surprise. “Uncle Harold? Is it really you?” I said. He seemed to say yes, but no further revelation was given, and soon I was dreaming about a shortage of guest towels in the linen closet.

Of course, if this had been a real glimpse of Adam, I might have expected to see other relatives, too, including some I never met in life, not to mention the entire race of redeemed men and women. That, at least, is what the mystical traditions about Adam would have us think: he is Adam Kadmon, Adam Protoplast, the representative of all humanity, first creature to bear the divine image and likeness, namer of the animals, revered by the unfallen angels, a glorious being whose rebellion was a universal catastrophe and whose redemption is the universal hope. To meet Adam face to face would be a low-grade beatific vision: one would see straight through to the essence of humanity; one would see all the generations in him and discover one’s own true self.