Noah 2 – Half Insane Creatures
I remember thinking about this story
It's gotta be 30 years ago
I think the meaning of this story stood out for me
When you read complicated material
Sometimes a piece of it will stand out
It's like it glitters
That might be one way of thinking about it
You're in sync with it
And you can understand what it means
And I think I understood what this part
Of the story of Noah meant
What nakedness meant in the story of Adam and Eve
To know yourself naked
Is to become aware
Of your vulnerability
Your physical boundaries
In time and space
And your fundamental physiological insufficiencies
As they might be judged by others
There's biological insufficiency
That's sort of built into you
Because you're a fragile, mortal, vulnerable
Half insane creature
That's just an existential truth
And so to become aware of your nakedness is
To become self-conscious
That is what is revealed to Ham
When he comes across his father naked
And so the question is
What does it mean to see your father naked?
And especially in an inappropriate manner like this
It's as if
Ham
He's
He's insufficiently respectful of his father
And the question is exactly what does the father represent?
And you can say, well
There's the father that you have
And that's a human being
That's a man like other men
But then there's the father as such
And that's the spirit of the father
And insofar as you have a father
You have both at the same time
You have the personal father
That's a man among other men
Just like anyone other's father but
Insofar as that man is your father
That means that he's something different
Than just another person
And what he is, is the
Incarnation of the spirit of the father
And to see that
To disrespect that carelessly
Noah makes a mistake, right?
He produces wine and gets himself drunk
And you might say, well
If he's sprawled out there
For everyone to see
It's hardly Ham's fault if he stumbles across him
But the book is laying out a danger
The danger is that maybe you catch your father
At his most vulnerable moment
And if you're disrespectful
Then you transgress against the spirit of the father
And if you transgress against the spirit of the father
And lose respect for the spirit of the father
Then that is likely to transform you
Into a slave
