Welcome to Emergence Magazine's podcast. I'm Emanuel Vaughn Lee, executive editor of Emergence

Magazine, located on the unseated ancestral lands of the Coast Mewalk people of present-day

Marin County. Each week we feature a new interview, narrated essay or story, exploring the threads connecting

ecology, culture, and spirituality.

An ancient and archetypal image of global apocalyptic transformation, the flood is once

more upon us. As ecological catastrophe engulfs us, sociopolitical bedrocks erode, and promises of safety

and security become lost in the deluge.

It is clear our time is not only gripped by devastation that is mythic in scale, but also by the emergence of immense possibility.

And while the flood is a familiar cyclical story of destruction and renewal, covenant and relationship,

it has historically also been a tale of selective preservation in which we decide what is fated to be sacrificed and what is worthy

of protection.

As we unmoor from the world as we know it and become adrift in climate turmoil, will we reimagine

the arc of our endurance?

In this week's essay, medieval scholars Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and Julian Yates examine the opposing

narratives of survival embodied by the dove and the raven, and perhaps the most abiding

of all flood myths, Noah's Ark.

As they unpack a plot of inevitable conclusion, against one of endless and unexpected

possibilities, the two scholars wonder how this myth can prepare us for all that lies ahead,

reminding us that the stories we tell of our moment must be manifold if we are to ensure survival.

They urge us to follow the raven into a new world of widened and inclusive refuge.

Abord

The weather is about to change, portending disaster.

...