Week 3 Story: Noah's Ark

           

Noah's Ark by Aurelio Luini

(Source: Flickr)

**The updated version of this story can be found in my portfolio about the Reality of Environmental Degradation in Myth and Folklore**

        

            God saw the wickedness of the men on earth. He saw the evils in their hearts and the evil in their behavior on the earth that he created, but God didn't just create the earth. He was the earth. God was the universe and everything more, but earth was where God placed man and the earth was the core of God's omnipotent being. In the chaos of the universe, God was the earth and because of that, on earth there was order. Because of God, the wind blew perfectly to create waves, rivers were made to run with pure water for man to drink, and every year the harvests would bloom in abundance for man to make bread. God was the earth and the earth was perfectly tailored to sustain man and woman as they lived in the light of God, finding God in each other. 

            The fruits of God's being were meant to nourish his children, but his children ignored those fruits and watched them spoil as they instead filled themselves will greed and gluttony. Because of this, the once free and roaring waves were being impeded by the waste and poison that his children had him pushing onto his shores. He felt an unquenchable thirst as rivers and streams were being drained dry and rolling fields and roaring forests were being shriveled brown, if not erased from this earth. If the power and wealth accumulated from the destruction of God’s benevolent energy was reinvested into feeding a village or filling a well, God’s energy would not be tempered by man, but the energy does not contribute to the common good.

Garbage that has washed up on a beach.

(Source: Wikipedia Commons)

            God created man and woman to be connected by a divine net, in which each was invested in creating paradise on Earth for their brothers and sisters, but instead, man had only self-interest. God waited for eternity, waiting for them to be like Noah, a man who lived a just life, one who only had love for mankind, interested in finding the good for all, and not just himself. Noah found God in his brothers and sisters on the earth, and in the soil he tilled, and the fires that burned to feed his family. But other men were not like Noah. These men on earth were destroying God's being. How could God love his children if they did not even let God live? Who would continue to let man breathe? Who would continue to protect every particle of their being from others so grand, such as the sun or the wild winds? Because of this corruption of flesh, God had to start over if he wanted man to have a chance at survival. Of course, with a man like Noah to lead, man will not make this mistake again. So he talked to Noah.

           "Noah, take those you love, of your own flesh, of your own values and your own love for the good of this earth. Take the lady you love because she is the stewardess of my being and take your sons and your wives and I will allow you to lead man to paradise. Take a pair of every animal that walks, flys, or swims in my environment, one male and one female, and build an ark for I will bring peace by disrupting the chaos." Noah did as God commanded and loaded all onto the ark and God said "for forty days and forty nights, it will rain and it will flood and that will be the end of man on earth". 

Photo of nightengale reed warblers that are extinct today in 2018.

Source: Wikipedia Commons

           It rained for forty days and forty nights and then they heard it stop. Noah did not know if the floor remained so he sent out a dove and it returned flying back with three nightengale reed warblers, a kind of bird that Noah did not have on his ark and did not exist on earth before. Their feathers were wet so Noah knew the earth was still flooded. Noah waited seven days and seven nights and he sent the dove out and it never returned so Noah knew that the clever dove was somewhere where it wanted to stay. 

            Noah opened up the ark and it stood in the middle of the clearest waters that he could ever see. Waters that trickled down the countryside, starting their journey as the sun warmed snowy white mountain caps, carving streams down God's skin. Waters so clear, ending in calm oceans where he could see the beautiful and colorful fish swimming within the dazzling coral reefs. He saw rolling fields and later found that the soil was so fertile that they grew the sweetest fruits and the biggest vegetables almost instantly. The air was unbelievably crisp, the sun was warm, and the wind was still cool. It was as if the earth was created for man and man was created for the earth. The earth was paradise and now man was to live in the footsteps of Noah. In the chaos, God created order once again, and man and woman were to reap what they sowed, they were to find wealth in each other, and they were to flow through the streams of God veins instead of trying to control them. 

Author's Note: This is my rendition of the story of Noah's Ark, in which God wiped mankind from the face of the earth with a flood after he saw that their souls were corrupt, with the exception of a just man named Noah and his loved ones, along with a pair of a male and a female of every animal to exist on earth. My version of the original story of Noah's ark is similar to the first one because they both center around the flood, but in my story, I focus on the man-made environmental degradation that caused God to make it flood for forty days and forty nights and why he chose Noah to lead all of mankind in environmental stewardship for the rest of eternity.

Bibliography:  Noah's Unit: The Ark, Genesis, and The Flood. The King James Bible (1611), Genesis 5-6 and 8-9