Across the nations, religions, continents and history, the story of The Big Flood is ever present.
Above anything else, this is the story about human destruction in the name of creating a better, more perfect race, and the collateral damage permitted in the name of “Better.”
Despite our relationship to religion, we cannot escape this tradition based on deeply held beliefs. As such, we all carry this unconscious traditional permission to apply better, even if on the way to create “better,” one will harm others.
Many of us can control this harmful “design,” but many cannot.
Let’s talk about “Forgotten by Noah”…
FORGOTTEN BY NOAH
Dalia eased the window open slightly. The fresh breeze filled the room.
What a beautiful day, she thought. She quickly ate a piece of cheese and some fresh bread. She hugged her mother who was busy threading wool on knitting needles. It was today that she had planned with Rahab to stroll along the beach. Just five miles. They would go to collect seashells and colorful stones for the gift they planned to make for Baret, as she was getting married. The necklace would commemorate their friendship that had lasted practically since they were all born.
“Ania!” Pawel shouted, “Quickly! Something’s wrong with Rozanna!”
Ania rushed to barn. Rozanna, a strong mare that had been working their farm land for the past five years, was neighing and stomping.
“Pawel, you fool, run for daddy, Rozanna is in labor,” said Ania.
The boy ran, tripping on his untied shoes, and screamed, “Daddy! Daddy! We will have a tiny horse, brand new,” the boy laughed and cried simultaneously.
Bartlomiej was just finishing his evening meal when he heard the boy calling. He abruptly pushed an aluminum bowl away and ran to the barn. By the time the young Pawel, smirking and sweating, arrived back at the barn, a beautiful, dark-brown foal neighed in the corner. Ania clapped her hands and desperately searched her mind for a name for the newcomer.
“Daddy,” she grabbed Bartlomiej’s hand, “he will be mine. Mine!”
Yo-Yo Ma and Zhang Zyi were on their way back from school, in silence. They held hands and occasionally glanced at each other. Oh, what joy and pride – they had just been admitted to a university in Beijing. They couldn’t wait to announce this fact to their mother. Although Nanjing, where they lived, was a provincial capital, kind of a backwater, they were dreaming about high society. Beijing was far away, but it was a true window to that ideal world. They quickened their pace.
Lilo and Tatew were just closing the Orthodox Church for the night.
“Have you seen Osann today?” asked Lilo.
“No, I think he is still working at the Mehatu,” replied Tatew.
“Ramadan is coming, so they must finish building the henhouse. You know this Turkish guy and the way he is, he won’t let Osann go if he doesn’t have his farmyard ready by the holiday,” Lilo said.
“Maybe we should check to see if his wife needs some help. She’s about to give birth,” Tatew offered.
“Oh, yes, she’s so huge already,” Lilo smiled. “I’m sure they’ll have twins!”
Joshua brought the army close to the walls of Jericho. God forbade him to have mercy. He had destined this city, air, land, and water solely for him and his tribespeople.
“We cut the throats of two locals,” an officer said, as he threw a fistful of colorful stones and seashells on the ground before the leader. That’s all they had in their sack.
Bushes rustled behind the barn. Strange, Bartlomiej thought, it’s not windy at all and the storm was supposed to come at night, not now. Maybe it’s that wild deer that dispersed the village market traders in Antonowka yesterday. It’s mating time now, so he’s raging. Oh well, he ignored it and returned to the barn to take another look at Ania’s foal.
“Nu tiepier,” Klim gestured with his dirty clamp-like hand and thirty ragged men jumped over the fence. Some held axes while others held pitchforks or square-shaped mauzers in their hands.
“Kill the Pole!” Ivan screamed as he kicked open the entry door to the wooden cottage.
Ania grabbed the terror-stricken Pawel.
General Matsui bowed in front of the emperor’s portrait. He stepped out in front of the building and called the waiting officers. He barked a few quick orders and 40,000 troops whose full souls and hearts were devoted to their divine ruler moved towards Nanjing.
On the third night, fires lit the streets of the town. Drunken mercenaries lurched among the charred bodies of raped girls. At dawn, they arranged for a spectacle of chopping heads by the river. On the other bank, the fleeing people were closing their eyes...
Talaat Pasha stretched and trudged toward the table. A map of the Turkish Empire lay spread out on the table where black ink blots indifferently marked hundreds of human settlements. Well, let us begin, he thought. He fixed his eyes on a dot with an inscription: Cilicia. He reached out for the phone.
Thousands of bare-footed Armenians maundered in the desert; they no longer paid attention to the falling bodies. Two men fled over the nearby hills. They turned on the south road where, along the road, they saw the dangling bodies of crucified pregnant women...
Manchuria, Canaan, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Katyn, Nanjing, Cilicia, Antonowka, Volhynia...These are but a few mile posts in a long line of human atrocities, examples of Man’s capacity to turn into dispassionate, murderous beasts. Dispassionate? How much passion there seems to be in this pursuit of the apparent correction of the existing status quo – to replace the imperfect with the perfect, with the only rightful religion, the only rightful system of laws, the only right view, thought, color, word...