Aug 01 | Prism Prayer (Letters from the Coast)

Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, ⁹‘As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, ¹⁰and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark.^{* 11}I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.’ ¹²God said, ‘This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: ¹³I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. ¹⁴When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, ¹⁵I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. ¹⁶When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.’ ¹⁷God said to Noah, ‘This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth.’

Genesis 9:8-17

I remember the very first time I bought a rainbow necklace.

It was probably in 2000 or 2001. There were so many options at the Pride Parade booths. I was about 15 and didn’t have a lot of money, and of course they were pretty overpriced, but it felt so, so important.

I picked one on a dog-tag style ball chain. Seven little metal rings, each one a different colour. Subtle, but unmistakable.

Wearing it felt powerful. My school was moderately safe, but things were not the way they were today. There was a little bit of danger in wearing it, but I didn’t care. I was who I was.

It’s amazing where you can see rainbows. The other day, looking into an evening sky, I saw one reflected in a light dusting of cirrus clouds. I’ve seen them reflected in ice-crusted snow at my feet. I’ve seen them in the mist rising off large bodies of water. Increasingly, I’ve seen them on small stickers pasted onto the glass walls of businesses around the city. “Safe zone,” these stickers proclaim.

Indeed.

One might argue easily that Genesis claims God plastered a safe zone sticker over the entire world.

The rainbow has since been adopted as a symbol for a multitude of different movements, but the one which most North Americans are familiar with is the pride flag. According to Wikipedia, it was popularized in 1978 by San Francisco artist Gilbert Baker. Since 1979 it has appeared with six stripes, corresponding to any naturally occurring rainbow, but originally it was made with eight, including pink and turquoise. The colours were actually assigned meanings:

Red: Life

Orange: Healing

Yellow: Sunlight

Green: Nature

Blue: Harmony/peace

Purple: Spirit

Pink: Sexuality

Turquoise: Art/magic

Sometimes a black stripe was added for AIDS victims as well.

Whatever you believe about the flood, it’s a story of God turning her back on creation, not because she is a petty creature but because that’s how bad humankind was acting. It must have been bad – humanity had barely gotten off the ground by the time God decided this. The best clue we have is the Song of Lamech, who sings to his wives about killing a man for striking him. God looks on humankind and “is sorry” to have created all things, for the earth is corrupt and “filled with violence.” Despite all of this, God sets apart the family of Noah, who is “righteous.”  Once the floodwaters have receded, God decides never again to wipe out life, and sets the “bow” in the clouds. This is a sign of peace, God laying her weapon down. Despite the continuing violence, God has determined not to punish all creation for the sins of humankind specifically. The resulting covenant, the Jewish people believed, was made with all creation and all people.

About a month ago, I came across this photograph on Twitter, taken by Christine Spencer and retweeted by @41Strange. Dazzled by its beauty, I smiled as I thought about the biblical story of the first rainbow as described above. I retweeted the image with the accompanying text:

“The rainbow has always been a symbol of divine reconciliation (and, I believe, most appropriately used by the queer community). And look here: it’s written into the very fabric of creation, wherever you look.”

As I continued to contemplate this, I was suddenly struck by the beautiful realization that one could just as easily say that queer people in all of their diversity are indeed living symbols of reconciliation. Queer folks, through their resilience, their willingness to speak the truth, their tendency to embrace things which would normally not be embraced by a person of their gender, their commitment to loving someone in a way that often transcends the smallness of gender norms – all of these things are refracted characteristics of the God who calls us out of our beautiful and very small human bodies and into a new dance of light and colour.

Happy Pride, y’all. :)