Company On the Walk "Back From the Brink"

Chagall, Noé lâche la colombe par la fenêtre de l'Arche
[Noah lets go the dove through the window of the Ark]

After forty days Noah opened the window that he had built into the ship.

He sent out a raven; it flew back and forth waiting for the floodwaters to dry up. Then he sent a dove to check on the flood conditions, but it couldn't even find a place to perch -- water still covered the Earth. Noah reached out and caught it, brought it back into the ship.

He waited seven more days and sent out the dove again. It came back in the evening with a freshly picked olive leaf in its beak. Noah knew that the flood was about finished.

He waited another seven days and sent the dove out a third time. This time it didn't come back.

- Genesis 8:6-12
(translation from The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language by Eugene H. Peterson)

There is so much to love in this sequence in the Noah story.

First and foremost, there is Noah's intimate relations with these birds. I can imagine him whispering to the dove, "Go out, look around, and then come back and tell me what you see." The Chagall image (above) amplifies the scene - Noah resting his hand on the back of the donkey; the chicken adding her two cents; one of Noah's daughters-in-law nursing a child in the background.

I wonder if Noah was being absent-minded when he first sent out a raven. "Go out, look around, and then --" . . .  but by then the raven was already gone, soaring free. Had Noah forgotten the way ravens soar, on and on, utterly confident, ignorant of limits?

I wonder what Noah thought when he saw that olive leaf. Did he want to steer for that patch of exposed vegetation? (Did the ark even have a rudder?) (And even if it did: which way to steer? "Where? Where did you get this olive leaf? Which way?")

Perhaps, more to the point, as one of my friends suggested to me, he thought, "Thank goodness the plants survived! I didn't think to bring them along on the ark!"

Certainly, a major theme of this sequence is assurance that there would be life after the ark -- "Noah knew that the flood was about finished."-- that is, more of the hope-giving hints of the kind discussed in my previous post.

The more I think about it, though, the more I become aware of the incredible richness of the life already being lived on the ark.

Since moving to Wisconsin, I have become familiar with the Native American appreciation of other species -- e.g. wolves (Ojibwe: ma’iingan) -- as our brothers and sisters. The process of really taking in what that means has been a slow one for me.

My son's family has a dog that works as a service animal. Observing many people interact with this dog over the past several years has opened for me a new awareness of the life-giving power of the relationship between people and other creatures.

A few years ago, I clipped an article out of the newspaper about "Twenty-five practices most associated with longevity." Along with eating legumes and hiking on mountains and listening to lots of music, there was this one: "Have a pet."

All of this makes me wonder: as we strive to walk "Back From the Brink" of nuclear war, might we have greater assurance if we imagine ourselves pulling back together with our brother and sister creatures?

The long walk . . .
(Source: Visit Kitsap Peninsula)

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Related post:

As we do the work to prevent nuclear war, perhaps we can vow to take as inspiration those amazing creatures we share this planet with. (See A Multitude of Reasons to Work to Prevent Nuclear War)