The Flood, the Ark, the Dove, and the Rainbow

This morning after the rain, I watched the end of a rainbow settle over our little farming hamlet of Dyer. The sight brought a ray of hope that pushed troubled thoughts about the economy and the selfish manner in which so many humans were behaving, away from the forefront of my mind.

The rainbow brought to mind the biblical story of The Flood and reminded me of what so many of us are missing by not finding comfort and reassurance in the ancient Scriptures. For many the story of a Jewish family visiting every continent and collecting a pair of each of the three billion living specie that inhabit the earth and saving them from the flood on an Ark, and then being asked to accept that as a literal truth, has made them dismiss the Bible and its spiritual messages altogether.

The story of The Flood reminds us that ever since ancient times our forefathers have been troubled by the wayward nature of our kind and how the accumulation of sins that we pass down from generation to generation slowly devalues the quality of our existence. The Biblical Flood is a coded parable filled with a spiritual messages hidden in the number, 40.

It was written as a blessing by a Kabbalah mystic at the start of the Piscine Age. The gathering of the animals to be saved symbolized that they were not sinful. The saving of Noah and his family symbolized that not all men were sinful. The Flood symbolically washed away all the accumulated sins of humankind and left the human family pure again.. When the waters subsided the Dove brought an olive bough as a symbol of Peace between man and God. The Rainbow gives us the promise of rebirth and renewal and heaven here on Earth. The number, 40, which also appears in the book of Moses and the sufi parable of Ali Baba, is the number of years of trial and error that all humans must struggle thorough before they reach the beginnings of real.maturity. In both sexes 40 is the age of menopause.

That Old testament parable was repeated in the New Testament - in the story of Christ, who, as the Prince of Peace, gave his blood to wash away our sins and bring the promise of a heaven within. Jesus too, spent forty days in the desert, struggling to shake off the devil within.

Seen in this light, the present with all its problems can be seen as just another moment in human development, with all our mistakes inevitably to be washed away and our progress renewed as we continue to strive to build a Heaven for all on Earth.