Rise Above the Flood with Your Ark of Clarity & Compassion
Scripture
Genesis 6:9-22
This is the account of Noah and his family. Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked faithfully with God. Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham and Japheth.
Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence. God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. So God said to Noah, “I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth. So make yourself an ark of cypress wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out. This is how you are to build it: The ark is to be three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide and thirty cubits high. Make a roof for it, leaving below the roof an opening one cubit high all around. Put a door in the side of the ark and make lower, middle and upper decks. I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it. Everything on earth will perish. But I will establish my covenant with you, and you will enter the ark—you and your sons and your wife and your sons’ wives with you. You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you. Two of every kind of bird, of every kind of animal and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground will come to you to be kept alive. You are to take every kind of food that is to be eaten and store it away as food for you and for them.”
Noah did everything just as God commanded him.
Rise Above the Flood with Your Ark of Clarity & Compassion
by Rev. Cory Bradford-Watts
Using the lens of parable to explore the story of Noah and the Ark, we can’t help but immediately reflect on those moments when we’ve been inundated by metaphorical flood waters ourselves – or think about the current state of the world in many ways. There’s a naturalness to many of scripture’s use of metaphors that we tend to relate to, biblical and otherwise. Whether it’s David and Goliath, Adam and Eve, Mohammed on the mount, or Cain and Abel, we immediately internalize these characters and stories into life lessons and personal insights; just as we do when we hear Christ speaking about debtors and kings to uplift forgiveness, compassion, and spiritual insight.
Noah and the Ark is another tale in this vein - a tale that strives to both literally and metaphorically uplift life and spirit! Indeed, just as in real life, we can connect the metaphor of a flood to the hardships of our spirit; what the Bible and other traditions describe as our harmful desires and tendencies toward selfish autonomy, fear, and hurtful actions.
I don’t know about you, but when I really take a look at my internal life I start to become deeply aware of how I often have been drowning in my own hellish anxiety and distracting selfish desires (or lusts). When I’m not centering on the space of peace or Sabbath that’s foundational to all conscious life, I seem to lose it entirely in whim after whim. But when I uncover that internal ark, that uplifting and stable place of clarity, compassion, acceptance, and openness, I not only find that I’m more joyful and peaceful, but also better able to engage with my work and with others without a flooding deluge: the judgment, the desires, the hurt, and the distractions that often undermine those connections.
But how do we find this internal space more readily or at all? Is it just enough to “have faith,” or to turn toward God? In a sense, yes – but it depends on how we think about these things!
No matter our religion, we tend to have been invited by Divinity or Life to pick up some spiritual practices that I believe help to build up and fortify our own internal ark of well-being – a space where we can wait out, overcome, and escape the floods of hurtful motives and external circumstances. These include contemplative prayer, meditation, chanting, singing, listening, reciting, and reading. But whatever the term or modality, the effectiveness of these practices tends to depend on our ability to maintain and repeat them, as well as how much we use them to strive for a reawakening of our intrinsic connection to open, peaceful consciousness sourced from Divinity. That means we have to find what’s right for us!
What’s also important is coming to know that all our distracted thinking is unneeded to have insight or to get by, and actually only furthers the selfish deluge of our egoic and divisive mindsets. Traditions like Buddhism and sages like Eckhart Tolle uplift the idea that letting go of our habitual searching for thoughts truly frees us to finally find peace and reconnect with the Buddha or Divinity at the source of our minds.
We tend to react either positively or negatively to everything that comes into our minds – pushing the idea away, fighting with it, or wanting to follow and bask in it. Contemplative exercises like entering meditative prayer (unceasingly, as the Bible says!) help us to strive to let go of these attachments and aversions and their thought-filled whirlpools, opening us up to the root of all life and peace within – just like an internal, God-designed ark. And like an ark, even as the rainfall and flooding of our past desires and aversions continue, we start to allow them to run their course without falling into them, allowing the stability and strength of our internal vehicle to rise above the downfall.
What I find interesting about this work (besides its effectiveness!) is that it tasks us with becoming less judgmental and more peaceful (more able to withstand the rain) even toward ourselves when we make mistakes, while still allowing us to undermine and release our harmful tendencies and painful emotions. But yes, in a way it also tasks us with letting go of our deep cravings for the things that we call “good” or pleasurable in a selfish way, and peacefully center on the source and root of all good things – God, within and around us in everything. This connects with the symbolism of our scripture – that the ark carries the wellspring of all life and will allow us to start as if anew.
Unfortunately, we can look around us – at our world and at our own life’s impact - and see the ramifications of when we center on the “corrupt” and “violent” nature of our self-worship and feelings of disconnection and mortality. When we orient our minds toward our self-image, our bodies, our personal successes or failures, and our divisive judgments and feelings of disconnection toward others, we’re told that we’ve corrupted our internal “earth” and ultimately start to corrupt the earth around us. However, we each have an opportunity to find that rootedness in Spirit within – no matter our spirituality or past. Like Noah, we can each allow God’s internal directive to help us build up and start to discover that internal ark (no matter how ridiculous parts of us find that to be), collecting and uplifting the roots of a new earth and find that in that centeredness, in that unceasing prayer, we rise above the flood.
Peace and blessings to you,
Rev. Cory