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Sailing with Noah I grew up in a devoutly religious family. My grandfather was a Methodist minister who preached in western Pennsylvania and along the southern tier of New York—the counties that border the northern edge of Pennsylvania. He had four sons, and my father was his second. I don’t think that any minister preaching in those rural counties in the 1920s was exactly well-off, but my father’s earliest memories were good ones. My grandmother died when the boys were quite young, however, and from then on their lives took a decided turn for the worse. My grandfather died from an infection, and the brothers, then ages four through twelve, all wound up in a Methodist orphanage near Jamestown, New York, called Gerry Homes. I have visited there. Dad still had friends in the small town of Gerry, and much of the orphanage was still standing in the 1960s. We visited the orphanage not because Dad had particularly fond memories of the place but rather because the woman who I had always referred to as my grandmother lived in a part of the orphanage that had been converted into a rest home. She had been the matron of Dad’s ward and would live out the rest of her life where she had worked as a younger woman. I guess she was the only mother my dad really knew, and the Methodist home was the only home he ever had. You can’t get much more Methodist than that. Both my parents went to Greenville College, a Methodist school, on the GI Bill, and that’s where they met. When I was young they were still pretty strict 284 18 as Methodists go, perhaps because they were raised as Free Methodists (as opposed to plain old Methodists; the use of the word free actually makes for a wonderful oxymoron—they were pretty restrained). In my parents’ day, “good” (conservative) Methodists did not wear jewelry. Instead of an engagement ring, a young lady would receive a watch. A watch was okay because it was utilitarian and had the added benefit of ensuring that you had no excuse for being late to church. Makeup was frowned upon, dancing was considered to be a little licentious, and card-playing, while not a sin, was at best a frivolity . Not surprisingly, when I was young we attended church just about every Sunday. I was encouraged to read anything and everything, but what I remember reading the most (along with the World Book Encyclopedia) was The Bible Story. There must have been ten volumes in the set; it basically took stories from the Bible, illustrated them with magnificent pictures, and retold them in a fashion that a young child could read and understand. To this day I can conjure up the image of Daniel in the lion’s den and Noah building his ark. As a child, I took a profoundly literal interpretive slant on those stories. No one told me at the age of nine that it was okay to think of those stories as metaphors or abstract lessons. Indeed, I was from a “God said it, I believe it, and that settles it” kind of family. I remember being terrified of the vengeful God of the Old Testament. He turned people into pillars of salt. He visited plagues upon the land. He gave Job the worst kind of fits, and I’ll never forget the picture of Abraham, his arm upraised as he prepared to plunge a knife into the body of his beloved son. Oddly though, I never felt that way about the story of Noah. I guess I could have. The idea of a great flood that takes the life of almost every living thing, sparing but a handful to repopulate the planet, could easily terrify any child. But for some reason, it didn’t—not then and most certainly not today, now that I’m experienced in dealing with people and with animals. No, I always thought it was a wonderful and elegant story and certainly the second great parable of the Bible. But it seems to me that just about everybody I’ve ever talked to about it has missed the point of the story entirely—and it doesn’t matter if they’re Christians or Jews. Some time ago I had a conversation about this with my dear friend Alvin Katzman. Alvin is Jewish. Not “real” Jewish (that is, conservative) but...

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