The animals went in seven by seven hurrah- hurrah....
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| The instructions were that two of each of the animals which were unfit for sacrifice and seven of those which were given the all clear for sacrifice should be taken into the Ark |
It does make telling the Old Testament easier i have to say. The sacrifice of Issac which we will becoming to for instance - that now makes sense if it is metaphorical. To be willing to give your most precious treasure. But God is not a concept or religion - so it calls into question what the nature of God is. There are long discussions about what God could possibly be - but what is clear when i think about it is the archetype and the quest.
I loved doing this drawing. Whenever i draw i get a chance to think about the story and the class and what needs to be done. Blackboard drawings are a meditative activity for me. I get to study wonderful paintings in detail and reproduce them. I get to think about the symbolism in them. For instance, the two trees - are almost certainly the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge, but they are either dead or withered. The animals which were chosen were nearly all cattle - the lion, smack in the middle of the drawing represents, as the lion always does - courage - and next to the lion, the sheep or ram. This is, in other words, a depiction of paradise being saved. The animals are heading to a new world. Around them the storm clouds gather. I realised as well that most animals are white, black, orange or brown. Of course there was not much celebration with the flood and all about to take place, but the mood was very sober indeed. The animals, slowly coming in to the ark and the birds flying in. Storm clouds gather - this is serious business. And as i drew the elephant and tiger and lion i felt so so sad... these are now on the red list of endangered species - if there only a real Ark, a literal one... but you know, the EARTH was supposed be this Ark.
The Ark has been compared to many things - Job's Leviathan, the Book of Life which Adam brought from Paradise, the Heavenly City in Revelations - it has even been compared to the True Cross, on which all humanity was saved.
The way we have told it in class has been long and very detailed - the journey to the destruction of the world has been one of slow descent, rather than an abrupt shock which it sounds like in most retellings of Genesis. There are important details which are missing, but for me, the most important part is time. Man took his time to get into the mess he got into by the time God decided to destroy the Earth. Also he was warned several times along the way. Wise up or else. It seems absolutely tragic that we don't seem to have learned anything since Genesis was written. Instead, we seem to be hellbent on recreating the catastrophe which was metaphorically spoken about.
Sometimes i think it may be easier to have this kind of patriarchal God which will really come down and sort things out. Instead we have physics, the law of diminishing returns and the limits of growth, which of course sort of act like the same kind of brake on our stupidity, except that currently mankind seems to be so blinded by greed that nothing seems to be able to reach us.
There are now numerous studies and please from head of schools for students to be taught things like caring, and social skills, and community. I really wish that they would seriously at the Waldorf Curriculum which answers all these needs and more. Through the curriculum we address so many requirements which help a human being on its way. We do not have religious or ethic classes in schools, instead the stories we have - from fairytales to the Norse myths to Hindu mythology to Roman history - give students an insight into our behaviour. Through them, we learn about how we behaved in the past and we are given food for thought. We never EVER moralise. Our fables are told without the moral of the story - children are allowed to draw their own conclusions, or to let the story sit in them. They then ask open questions, often they are met with the answer "I wonder..." Stories are not just silly made up fantasies - stories are the very kernal of how we live. What we tell ourselves helps us to do the things which we do, and if what we tell ourselves is that there nothing in the world worth looking after, that life is short and brutish and ugly, then that is exactly the way we are going to behave.
So, it is now time to start the routine of early nights and showers and quietness. I am glad for it.
Running again tomorrow after school and then cleaning up - yep, more cleaning up and Admin.
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