Genesis Cycle 7 Noach

Noach

What do we do with a blank page? This is a question posed by the Mesopotamians in the epic Gilgamesh, by the B’Hai Faith, by the Muslims, by the Qumran sect, by our Talmudic rabbis  concerning this week’s parasha Noach.. What do we do with the sweat, determination, anger, disgust, physicality, desire, apathy, headache and hope it takes to make the page blank? For after all, how can a page be blank if in the struggle to craft it we bring-on the same junk we think we are cleansing?

I think of the creek next to my home on Mt Baldy. When the flood came in August though (two weeks before my arrival) it seemed it wiped away all of the vegetation and green on the banks. When my neighbor (part native) bemoaned the loss I told him it was nature. Water here has wiped out water.  The big cleanse of the flood left this mountain road with a long stretch of white rocks. It's like a long tallit and the tzitzit are the streams that still remain. 

Yes, after staying on top of it all,  above the wave, yes way high on the crest, after being slammed about for forty days and forty nights, after doing all that could help manifest the divine will of absolute newness, a new world, a new life, a new  coast, a new state, a new earth, a new drink, a new friend, a new book, a new house, a new rock in your hand, a new chant, a new prayer, a new temple, a new husband, a new bed…. you realize that the very action of riding on the crest of the wave has made newness impossible, what do you do?

I think of the friend up on Ice House canyon who lives in a dream house with views of mountains and pine trees, who builds his own walls and climbs a granite hill every day to gather wood and who says...after thirty years I need to move on, clean things up a bit. How can a simple physical move clean things up, clean the air? He's Armenian, speaks of the Armenian genocide, has a tattoo. 

Note: We don't lose hope.

Note: This isn’t about them as compared to us. It’s not about … the other left. It’s not about all others destroyed for their immorality and lewdness.  It’s about us. That world in the parsha Noach is our world. That war is our war. That murder is our murder. That dirt is our dirt. That disgust is our disgust. That flood is our flood, the one we call in our hearts when all else fails, when the only alternative is the clean slate.

The paradoxical clean slate that can’t (by very definition) be a clean slate.

We are as Rabbi Schneur Zalman describes… the nefesh bahama below all other bahamot as well as the holy nefesh Noach who walks with God. As much as we yearn to erase our mistakes, our silly words, our outrageous behavior, our self righteousness, our judgment, our cruelty, the blood on our hands, there isn’t any erasing.  Yes, we can try the vacations, the saunas, the yoga, the religions, the drugs, the alcohol, the self help books, the music, the sources, the scholarly manifestos, the money, the status and reputation… but none of this can rush through our veins and drown out the tiny little memories of our same very tiny actions. Or if it does, it grabs the beauty along with it. 

I think of myself.I think of how hard I have tried to wash myself real clean all these years. 

Well then after the whole fiasco….after a state of almost-destruction….and now the sun comes out and shines right on us…and we are in the spotlight…what do we do?

Note: We face it, face ourselves.

And if Rabbi Nehemiah of Talmud is correct in Genesis Rabbah 30:9…then we have to look real deep.  Noah, he says, is a tightly shut vial of perfume in a graveyard.  If this is Noah, then what are we?

Trying to figure that out is the work of a lifetime.

It is the work of acceptance. Of love, not destruction. We forgive ourselves, our neighbors, our God, with hands open wide. We realize that a flood of study, of words, of music, of meditation, of water, of partying, of praying...a flood of anything to blot out a past reality.... is not the answer. Nothing created can ever be lost, the evil along with the good. As with Amalek, we remember to wipe him off the metaphorical slate. We are not to forget.  We therefore embrace all.  We walk in God’s ways and offer a rainbow, a b’rit to those who have hurt us most, the dead in their graves and the living in their graves. We walk over the hill and see with grace and gratitude the beauty that does remain before us, even on that dirty slate. We thank God for it and embrace it as it is. We give ourselves in full sacrifice like sparks of light flying heartily into the heavens. We don't give up. We grow strong.  Strong enough to follow the mitzvoth. Strong enough to submit, give in, then share those sparks with all people, all friends, eyes open.

Note: This is a turning point, this flood.

As Walt Whitman says, we embrace a blade of grass.

As Dylan Thomas says, we hear the pebbles chiming in the holy streams.

As Alan Ginsberg says, (we see those) who wandered around and around at midnight in a railroad yard wondering where to go and went, leaving no broken hearts.

As William Blake asks, (we question) what immortal hand or eye could frame our fearful symmetry?

As Isaiah says in 54:10….For the mountains may be removed and the hills may shake, but My chesed or loving kindness will not be removed from you, And My covenant of peace will not be shaken.

 Many mystics and rabbis and teachers of Talmud have expressed this in so many different tongues and eras.  This teaching of tolerance is the language that connects us.