בְּכֹּל אֲשֶׁר נִשְׁמַת־רוּחַ חַיִּים בְּאַפָּיו מִכֹּל אֲשֶׁר בֶּחָֽרָבָה מֵֽתוּ
B'kol asher nishmat ruakh hayim b'afen mikol asher bekharavah meitu
All that had the breath of the rush of life in their nostrils, all that were on firm ground, died. …Noah alone remained, and those who were with him in the Ark.
— Tr. Everett Fox
Genesis 7:22
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I'll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass the world is too full to talk about. —Rumi.
The third wave of Covid is flooding the earth. The suffering is tremendous. Some have arks of refuge, many, many more don’t.
How does the story of Noah help me understand what is going on and what Ark I am called to build?
The Torah says God caused the flood as a response to the violence wrought by humans against each other and all life form. The floods are God-given opportunities to begin again, by creating an Ark.
NVC and the Torah Portion
The Hebrew word for Ark, תֵּבָֽה, teva, means the structure of a word. How do we end violence of human-against-human? By creating for ourselves and our community a structure of words, a narrative, that doesn’t lead to violence.
NVC explains that words that come from a place of judgment, blame or shame lead to violence, indeed are a form of violence, against ourselves and others.
Parshat Noakh shows me that when I act and speak from the “firm ground” of believing that only my values, judgments and experiences are the right ones, I participate in drowning the experience of others. I build an Ark , a narrative, constructed to include only those with whom I “agree.”
The new Ark, the new structure of words, is one that buoys me and what I value, as well as others and their values. This is the higher evolutionary possibility of this second promise of creation.
How can I act from this place of duality, to welcome all beings into my Ark, including my own being, so that I construct a narrative that contributes to healing the world from both floods and fires?
For, as James Baldwin wrote from an old Negro spiritual, God gave Noah the rainbow sign / No more water but fire next time. (— Baldwin, A Fire Next Time.)
NVC teaches us to shift from making meaning of suffering by labeling things as good and bad, right and wrong. Instead, focus on valuing the experience of each being, human and non human. We expand our hearts and minds to make room for everyone’s experience. From that expanded place, we choose words and actions that value every being.
A Buddhist teaching story that has stayed with me for over 30 years:
Neither Attached nor Ignoring
The Zen Master and the Tibetan Master met in conversation for the first time.
The Zen Master thrust an orange forward, toward the Tibetan Master, and blurted out, "what is?"
(Zen Subtext: If you say it’s an orange, you are ignoring that this formation we see as an orange is composed of all the elements in the universe. If you say, it’s not an orange, you are ignoring what you see right in front of you.)
The Tibetan Master had some private words with his translator, trying to understand what the Zen Master was asking him.
Finally, the Tibetan Master said to the Zen Master, "I don’t understand. Has the Master never seen an orange before?"