Noah: How to Survive a Storm Silent Center of Things
Parshat Noah teaches us how to survive the storms of our lives – the deluges of uncertainty, loss, grief, and pain that enter with very little (if any) warning, and leave us scared and adrift on tumultuous waters. Noah is not about creating a battle plan or an escape route to sunnier climes. Noah is about figuring out how to be in the dead center of the storm and survive. Step One: Recognize that this is happening. 13. And God said to Noah, "The end of all flesh has come before Me, for the earth has become full of robbery because of them, and behold I am destroying them from the earth.
וַּי ֹאמֶר אֱֹלהִים לְנ ֹ ַח קֵץ ּכָל ָּבׂשָר ּבָא ְל ָפנַי ּכִי ָמלְָאה.יג :ָָארץ ֶ ׁשחִיתָ ם אֶת ה ְ ָָארץ ָחמָס ִמ ְּפנֵיהֶם ְו ִהנְנִי ַמ ֶ ה
14. Make for yourself an ark of gopher wood…
... ֲעׂשֵה לְָך ּתֵ בַת ֲעצֵי גֹפֶר.יד
22. And Noah did; according to all that God had commanded him, so he did.
: ַוּיַעַׂש נ ֹ ַח ּכְכ ֹל ֲאׁשֶר ִצּוָה א ֹתֹו אֱֹלהִים ּכֵן ָעׂשָה.כב - Bereshit 6: 13-14, 21
As Elizabeth Kubler-Ross famously noted in her 1969 book, On Death and Dying, our first instinct as humans when hit by a major loss or unexpected bad news is to deny its existence or severity. When I woke up the morning of September 11, 2001, I remember hearing the news of the World Trade Center attacks on my way to class at NYU. I turned to a fellow student and asked if she thought classes would be canceled. I’ll never forget the look on her face as she stared at me in disbelief. “Class?” She said. “Thousands of people have died.” My brain was fighting hard to break through the fog of denial in order to process the information: this is actually happening. Tara Brach teaches a very helpful practice for working with very difficult emotions that arise in practice and life. It is called R.A.I.N., which stands for: Recognize, Accept, Investigate, Non-identification. Recognition is the first step – seeing a thing for what it is, even if we 1