ALL ABOARD! (the "Back From the Brink" Campaign, that is!)

"The crew of the Apollo 13 lunar landing mission are
shown in their space suits on their way to the launch
pad at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Kennedy, Fla.,
Saturday, April 11, 1970." (Image: VOA)

Next GOD said to Noah, "Now board the ship, you and all your family -- out of everyone in this generation, you're the righteous one.

"Take on board with you seven pairs of every clean animal, a male and a female; one pair of every unclean animal, a male and a female; and seven pairs of every kind of bird, a male and a female, to insure their survival on Earth. In just seven days I will dump rain on Earth for forty days and forty nights. I'll make a clean sweep of everything that I've made."

Noah did everything GOD commanded him.

- Genesis 7:1-5
(translation from The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language by Eugene H. Peterson)

Let it be remembered: when the time came, Noah actually got on board the ark.

If you're like me, you may have heard or read this story many, many times without noticing that simple fact.

It's easy to miss - there's so much else going on! All those animals, two of every kind, from the very biggest to the very smallest -- it summons up colorful, exotic images; one can hear (and possibly even smell!) the scene in one's imagination.

And we all know how the rest of the story goes: the flood . . . everything being wiped out . . . . From our vantage point, it can seem like getting on the ark was the only sane thing to do, and that it was obvious that Noah had no other choice. Of course he got on the ark! To have balked would have been suicide.

But here's the thing: at that moment, Noah didn't know how the story was going to turn out. Noah was living in the moment. Noah was making it up as he went along.

It was only upon this most recent reading that I wondered, "Did it occur to Noah to not get on the ark? Couldn't he have backed out at the last minute?" After all, just because he was hearing messages from God, and just because he was expecting a humanity-destroying flood, and just because he had maxed out his credit card buying lumber, pitch, and other supplies at Home Depot, doesn't mean Noah couldn't have bailed out of the whole project at any point.

It's easy to think of Noah surrounded by others -- wife, sons, sons' wives . . . . (And all those animals!) But I'm now thinking of how lonely it must have been for Noah. It must have been a little like the way an astronaut feels, alone inside that spacesuit, walking out onto the launch pad, and realizing that the community of supporters that has been there all along is receding into the background.

*   *   *

In my own life, I often have impulses to back out. And, Lord knows, I have been a quitter more times than I care to admit.

More and more, I need to urge myself, "Just show up." There always seem to be a multitude of reasons to not show up . . .

 . . . this is too hard . . . 
 . . . I'm not going to do a good job . . . 
 . . . nobody even cares if I'm there . . . 
 . . . maybe this wasn't a good idea . . . 
 . . . I don't have the right clothes (yes, really) . . . 

Of course, nothing I have to show up for in my own life is as important as Noah showing up on that ark!

(Well . . . perhaps . . . almost nothing . . . . )

*   *   *

The "Back From the Brink" campaign to prevent nuclear war is like that ark. The looming danger has been identified, the work has been done to build a structure, and now the vessel is ready to set sail. The essential ingredient, of course, is all the people who will make it go.

Inevitably, all of us will struggle with questions . . .

 . . . is this too hard . . . ?
 . . . what if I don't do a good job . . . ?
 . . . does anyone even care . . . ?
 . . . maybe I'm making the problem bigger than it is . . . ?
 . . . will people get mad at me . . . ?

When those questions come up, it can be tempting to push them out of one's mind - deny, repress, entrench.

But maybe Noah can show us another way. Like Noah, we have to admit that there are many difficult questions -- real questions -- questions that we don't know the answer to, at least not in any definite way. And, also like Noah, we really only need to know one thing: right now, showing up is what matters.

Oh, and one more thing: we have something going for us that Noah didn't.

For Noah, the looming danger was a belief, a supposition, a warning that had come to him out of thin air. He could never be certain that he wasn't just imagining it. For us, the looming danger is concrete: the nuclear weapons aren't an abstraction. They exist right now -- thousands of them -- and they are primed for launch.

The world's nuclear warhead count - June 2018
(Image: Nagasaki University)

Could there be any clearer reason to show up?

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Related post:

Do we have a way to immerse ourselves in the experience of what the use of those nuclear weapons would really mean -- prospectively -- so that we can truly cause ourselves to confront our own inaction?

(See Stop engaging in risky behavior )