2020.10.25 Scared Sinless

We "Whities" seized dominance with vigor, vengeance, veracity
We consumed everything within our reaches—and more.
We—voraciously and stingily— gobbled up
    all land
    all healthcare
    all money
    all goodly resources
    all power—and made it male
           
At first our status gave us
    pride, joy, glory
Then denial, ignorance, lassitude.

Now we are dying
    in droves,
        droves.

The Beauty of the Earth
    dims
    blurs
    dwindles.

We are quick to say wild animals—some human—have invaded,
        BUT
It is we—we—who have invaded their living space. We. Us.

We are scared to death
    ashen.
On knees we pray, and pray, with all that makes quiver our minds.

There is only one solution—one.
    Forgiveness?
    Too slippy slippery

No, we must actually love our neighbors as ourselves.

This cannot be lame lip service, a nod to Biblical aspirations.
    NO.
It must run deep into the veins of our heart.
We must get to know, not just love, our neighbors.

Known and unknown,
    always the one commandment.
        
Bidden or not, neighbors are here.

Moses legislated the politics
Jesus summarized the vision
Paul made it unconditional
Parental figures taught the young
   repeatedly taught and told and taught
the only one—just one behavior
    crucial
        necessary
            indispensable
            
               SHARE.

2020.10.18 Wisdom. Who? What? Where? When? Why?

Wisdom is considered one of God’s unfathomable gifts.  This is a note on the first chapter of the biblical Book of Sirach the central theme of which is that Wisdom comes from God, was with God in the beginning, is of God, is a female figure, and is deeply connected with spirituality. Whew!     

But why is Wisdom “unfathomable”?  Well, I suppose because Divinity itself is unfathomable.

Back in the 1980s, I was the chaplain at an alcohol/drug rehab facility. I was giving a talk on Spirituality to the patient community and ventured into the topic of Wisdom and its role in recovery. I began with a phrase from the biblical book called Sirach: “To fear the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom, or God./Higher Power” A young black man leapt to his feet, raised his fists and shouted: “What the hell do you know about wisdom, anyway—or God?” He called me inept and stupid. I froze. Unbidden, a surge of energy rose up inside me:  “Excuse me, sir, sit down right now. I have listened to you and others with respect. You owe me the same. So sit down and shut up!” He sat down—wisely. Whether this was a wise confrontation or not, I have no idea, but it surely was unfathomable and felt damn good-godly to me.
            
                                             *  *  *  *

Sister Stan (Stanislaus Kennedy), Irish Sister of Charity since 1958, wrote in Gardening the Soul. Soothing seasonal thoughts for jaded modern souls, 2001. Her entry for October 12, our traditional Columbus Day, now quite discredited, unless you are wise enough to hold the wonder of explorative adventure in your soul alongside modern historical skepticism about legends, is:

Wisdom is not knowing as well as knowing, and being at peace with that uncertainty. It is about awareness and it is about wonder. It is about stopping and noticing phenomena in the world around us—air, water, wind, light, gravity, birth, rocks, heartbeats—and appreciating and understanding them.   

To glean wisdom we must keep ourselves open and receptive and perceptive. Wisdom comes from boldness, from participation and tolerance, uncertainty, confusion, ignorance, suspicion, pain, suffering, joy, laughter, fun and love. Wisdom comes from our participation in and appreciation of all things in our mind, heart, body, and spirit.

                                           *  *  *  *

Who is wise? What is wise? Why be wise?  You could after all be a wise-arse or a wiseacre.

Some years ago my late great Jesuit Spiritual Director Pierre Wolff  wisely told a group of retreatants, eager for a clear Word from God: "If you want to know how you stand with God, then look at how you stand with your neighbors.” Simple, right?  Inside I thought: hopeful, uneasy, fearful, judgmental, ashamed, loving, longing, hopeful.  Simple?   

From ancient Persian wisdom: “How do you know God?” You should respond, ‘Because God is in my heart.’ Can we know ourselves if we do not know God? The real understanding of ourselves is our understanding of God.”

The Bible is called Holy exactly because it is a jumble of unfathomably interconnected paradoxes—all of them beloved in Godde. The biblical book called Ecclesiasticus (book of the Church) or The Wisdom of Jesus, Son of Sirach, composed about 180 BCE, was not included in the Jewish canon, but considered canonical by the early Christian Church. Protestant reformers relegated it to Apocryphal writings—runners up. Hence!—Sirach was and is controversial, unfathomable, and obviously wise.  

Sirach makes the case that Wisdom is from the Lord God, insisting throughout: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning is Wisdom. . . . To fear the Lord is fullness of wisdom; she inebriates mortals with her fruits . . .”  (Sirach 1: 16) This line is scandalous. She? Inebriation as in drunkenness? Her fruits? Sex?  Unfathomable! Yet it was the energy that surged inside me and gave me courage enough to confront those in my path who would hold me back, turn deaf ears.
 
Wisdom inebriates mortals with her fruits. She inebriates mortals with her fruits.

HOLY WISDOM. HOLY WORD. Thanks be to God.

Oh, and what does Wisdom look like? Check your mirror, my friends.

2020.10.11 My "Racism". Part Twelve. Sowing Seeds.

I started to attend the Episcopal church regularly. I loved the unitive meal, called Holy, but it didn’t happen every week. Why not? Did they think we Christians only needed to be transfused with Christ’s body and blood monthly?

All this religion. All this prayer. All this church. All these beautiful rites and rituals and songs. No one has a right to any of it. I was learning that rights and duties merged—merged—in acts of simple creative gratitude, like worship. Worship is art for the sake of everyone’s spiritual delight. Worship is, or should be, natural. It just happens, like praise. Birdsong is worship as grand as the huge Mormon Tabernacle choir, or a Gospel Choir of all black people, or a little girl marching about crooning Handel’s Hallelujah chorus, or the murmuring hum of prayers.    

What matters to God, really?  Would I find that in church? I went to graduate school at Columbia in N.Y.C. where I got my Master’s degree in Spanish language and literature, still searching for God and myself, still wondering about my racism and God’s vision, feeling sure that words mattered as much as sacrament and song in true worship.

I was married and the mother of four lovely children. I was still searching for God’s will—or mine, whichever came first. This might be the first time in my young life that I tangled with a moral dilemma that had no right answer.

Chapter XXXII. Motives and Consequences—Another Pungent College Learning

The professor, Miss XXX, walked slowly, so slowly you could call it deliberate, into the Ethics class to deliver the first lecture. Would she make it onto the dais? I thought she was either too ancient to care about ethics, or had lived enough life to be close to a guru on the moral life. Either way, I remember exactly her first sentence of the first lecture: “In making ethical decisions, which is more important, motives or consequences?”  She added: “Please prepare an essay with your own thoughts on that question and have it ready for next week’s class.”

This old woman was nobody’s old fool. I wrestled with that question day and night. I thought there had to be a “right” answer. This was an Ethics course, wasn’t it? I argued for consequences, imagining all the innocent people hurt in car accidents, or in wars, or in love.

I remembered that Bill Brakeman had been very badly injured in a car accident. I remember the phone call from his mother; I remember going to visit him in a hospital off of Den Road, in Rye, New York, just over the Connecticut line into New York state. Bill had been driving home from the big city where he had gone to hear jazz and was hit by another vehicle. I have no idea who was at fault. All I knew was that Bill was very badly injured. I stared down at him, pale and in pain, in that hospital bed. Not sure of a thing except my own shock, I bent over and kissed him lightly on the lips. I thought but do not remember saying: I love you. Bill’s recovery was very long, so long it delayed his going to college by a year. He had been a year ahead of me in high school, and now he would be a year behind me in college. God, I was glad he lived.

Years later I would decide that motives outweighed consequences. I think I got that from the Bible. God was often portrayed as a voyeur into human hearts, and people often changed from within, like Job. I decided that what happens inside a person has a lot to do with God—and motives.

Chapter XXXIII. Who Is The Greatest?

Memory: Once in junior high school a teacher posed this question to a bunch of upturned but blank faced seventh graders: Who was the greatest man in the world and why? I hated the WHY!  I knew enough not to put down my father, which wouldn’t have been quite true anyway. I wrote down Abraham Lincoln. Why? He freed the slaves of course. I learned that my answer was void of any historical complexities, but the teacher cleared up my confusions—and failed. There was no freakin’ right answer! Later I thought the church’s answer would have been Jesus of course. I didn’t understand that one either, but I recall a twinge of guilt that I had not put Jesus down.

Would I now? Would Jesus have freed slaves? Surely he died trying. Jesus’s cruel death was inevitable given his political vision. So was Lincoln’s.  Jesus acquired the messianic title Christ after his followers woke up years after his death to the image of God he proclaimed and lived. Lincoln had no such a title though he was a devout Christian. Still, one does not have to be a Christian to be a christ.

Both men, strikingly, were “men of sorrow acquainted with grief” as the great messianic lyric (Handels’ Messiah) tells us. Lincoln didn’t smile much. And Jesus is not remembered in the New Testament as laughing and smiling either.

     

Both of my chosen heroes told parabolic stories with a punch, stories that pointed without GPS directions, stories that confused and transfixed. These stories were provocative and told not to convert but to create—to stun, astonish, make something new, motivate people to do something new, something true. Parables are motivated by greater goals. My choice wasn’t such a miss.

Chapter XXXIV. The Sower

Jesus’s Parable of the Sower was told to listeners living in an agricultural culture.  A sower goes into a field to sow seeds with the obvious hope that some of the seeds will take root, grow, and supply food enough to feed hungry people.

Those who remembered Jesus and retold his parables, orally and later in writing, knew that he had a habit of not explaining them. Jesus hoped his stories would seed the kingdom. Lincoln too sowed seeds he hoped would become a country. BUT, in this parable, Jesus, or Jesus according to Matthew’s gospel, gives in to nagging disciples who beg to know what this parable means—exactly. Please, please, please. He succumbs to the lure of consequential ethics. He details the different qualities of soil, each one descriptive of a human condition—too dry, too rocky, too distracted—none of which yield a fruitful harvest.

Just like when a parent gives in to a nagging child, Jesus’s usual strategy of not explaining got sabotaged. His immediate followers, then and forevermore, obsess and compete. Whose soil will yield the best growth for the vision of God? Right away they, and we, lose sight of the main character in the story: the Sower.

The Sower, a metaphor for God, continues to sow and sow and sow. That’s the idea. That’s the grace, the point. This is not a parable about divine condemnation, rejection, or self-improvement. It’s not even about the sin of competitiveness for self-gain. The silent sower, whose sack is never empty of seeds, keeps sowing—without ceasing. God is extravagant with seed. If your “soil” is too arid today, seeds keep coming. There is no end to such potentiation. And no discrimination. I pray to the Sower.

Sow me, Sower
Sow your seeds.

In the beginning, I am fertile—flirty, fruitful, foxy
Any seed is mine. Every seed bears fruit.

In the middle, I try out soil-types—obsess about my own—until
    I harden against any seed
       waste seeds, ignore others,
    arid with indifference,
                  thinned by busyness and grief,
        bloated with pride or affluence
The Sower deftly sows—all seeds mine, all soils me.

At the ending time
    I don’t care—nor lie nor fake nor die
         —nor try to be sower seed or soil alone

Sower, seed, and soil—just so.

Sower, sower, double my order. Thank you.


Chapter XXXV.  Formation
 

I learned from all the sources that have formed me over time. I didn’t realize this at first, but now I see that most of my seeds came from Scripture and prayer conversations with the Sower. I was seeded to believe that no one was excluded from divine seeding—no one. Such conditioning would become my armor against racism, even in a white-privileged world. I could see that this way of living was NOT the way of God. Simply so.

“Lincoln will not return from the dead, even as a ghost, but his broadly balanced democratic  pluralism may be all there is to rescue us yet again.”  New Yorker, 9/28/20, Adam Gopnik “Better Angel. An Abraham Lincoln of His Time, and Ours.”

Jesus the Christ appeared to many after he died. We are STILL working on Jesus’s vision of the Kingdom of God. Perhaps these two greats will collaborate—for kingdom, for country.  

I must note this: Neither one of my chosen heroes slipped into racism or exclusionary rhetoric along the torturous way of promoting a unitive vision—although both men were white, Jesus with a semitic edge, and privileged, Jesus with rich friends who provided consistent hospitality and some financing of his campaign.



 

2020.10.04 Listen! You Are Holy.

Below is a poignant prayer of great beauty by Jane Mead, award-winning American poet who loved Nature, lived in California, and died at 61—too young. Yet her words live on. Here she says: Listen!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I live in a retirement community surrounded by tall trees—Nature’s sentinels  I do not feel the ache of loneliness, because I do not live alone.There are many people here, however, who do feel such loneliness. The weather is friendly to outside walks. When I see people strolling I nod and wave at a distance. I stop to chat—standing 6-10 feet away and through my mask—when I see people sitting on a bench or on their walker seats. Sometimes we stand side by side to watch the construction site vehicles, at rest or at work. Despite the current isolating circumstances, amidst the silent dread of winter’s approach and anxiety about our nation, not to mention our planet in peril, there is a silent affectionate ache that connects every living thing. Listen for it.


Concerning That Prayer I Cannot Make
     by Jane Mead

Jesus, I am cruelly lonely
and I do not know what I have done
nor do I suspect that you will answer me.

And, what is more, I have spent these bare months bargaining
with my soul as if I could make her
promise to love me when now it seems
that what I meant when I said “soul”
was that the river reflects
the railway bridge just as the sky
says it should - it speaks that language.

I do not know who you are.

I come here every day
to be beneath this bridge,
to sit beside this river,
so I must have seen the way
the clouds just slide
under the rusty arch -
without snagging on the bolts,
how they are borne along on the dark water -
I must have noticed their fluent speed
and also how that tattered blue T-shirt, caught,
and the white islands of ice flying by
and the light clouds flying slowly under the bridge, though today the river’s
fully melted.  I must have seen.

But I did not see.

I am not equal to my longing.
Somewhere there should be a place
the exact shape of my emptiness -
there should be a place
responsible for taking one back.
The river, of course, has no mercy -
it just lifts the dead fish
toward the sea.  
Of course, of course.

What I meant when I said ”soul”
was that there should be a place.

On the far bank the warehouse lights blink red, then green, and all the yellow
machines with their rusted scoops and lifts
sit under a thin layer of sunny frost.

And look -
my own palm - there, slowly rocking.
It is my pale palm -
palm where a black pebble
is turning and turning.

Listen -
all you bare trees
burrs
brambles
pile of twigs
red and green lights flashing
muddy bottle shards
shoe half buried -
listen, I am holy.

2020.09.27 My "Racism"—Brief Anecdotal HIstory. Part Eleven. A Silent Divide

Chapter XXIX. God’s Rights?

I never thought of God as having any rights, only duties to help us make sure we knew how to exercise our right, principally to freedoms. It wasn’t my right to go to Smith College, but my privilege. It wasn’t my right to visit Spain. It was my privilege, my class, my caste. It wasn’t even my right to get married or have children. It was my hope, my love, my choice, and, yes my privilege—until the murmurs and shouts of feminism, housewifery, wifeyness, and at-home mothering became my duty.

I began to think beyond the particulars of my duties and understand that my whole duty was to live my one precious privileged life to its full in compassionate consideration of myself, God, my family, and my neighbors near and far. I had left myself out of all these duties, and I was wilting.

As much as I’d loved Mr. DeNood I had to get off the teeter-totter of the rights/duties paradigm, because I was losing my balance, and I had to get on with that life and DO something. So I got pregnant—again. I also wanted to get out of Alabama, especially since the misogynist old gynecologist had fitted me for a dysfunctional diaphragm. My father was recently retired and he proposed to Bill that they start a cable television business together, with Bill on the electronics and sales and my dad offering business advice and financing. Our ticket out of Alabama! On the road again in our Chevy station wagon named Roosevelt Franklin, we headed “home.” I was nursing a huge belly and our fourth child-to-be—nearly born en route but holding on till we arrived at my parents’ home in North Canton, Connecticut. We lived with them until the house across the street was ready for us to purchase and move into with our family of six. It was 1970, November.

Chapter XXX.  Ether

I was surprised to see that Ether was now living with my parents. She had lived in Stamford and had moved upstate with them. Her boyfriend, Willie James, was in prison. I didn’t know why. As nearly as I can reconstruct it, Ether and my mother, who wanted a laundress (imagine!), cooked up a live-in arrangement that suited both of them perfectly. I don’t know what my father thought, but Ether became a member of our family. She was a large woman, strong, affectionate, and popular with the children. She accomplished a task I thought could not be done soon after we arrived at my parents’ home.

It was dark. My sleep was fitful but oddly sound. I was engaged in a dream in which I was drowning and struggling to save myself. As I emerged from the dream state, I realized I was drowning—in a pool of blood. I’d managed to contract an obstetrician in Hartford. Bill and I woke my parents, being very careful not to startle my father who, after reading Truman Capote’s book In Cold Blood, had purchased a shotgun which he kept at his bedside. (Our family would not be murdered by intruders, but Dad might murder one of us by accident.) We took towels for my blood and hopped in Roosevelt Franklin to head for Hartford Hospital, the exact location of which we didn’t know. Why we did not call an ambulance I have no idea. We made it. The doctor showed up, gave me Pitocin to “induce her labor” he said. My first thought: “More labor?” My second thoughts: “Oh dear God, let this baby be born safely and don’t let me die! You could also make this labor short. Please and thanks.”

John Thomas Brakeman was born about 5:30 a.m. within a couple of hours (not bad, God). John weighed almost seven pounds, and I stayed alive even though this was another placenta praevia birth. This doctor had given my Scopolamine, a drug that gave me powerfully terrifying hallucinations of wild beasts—huge tigers and much more—racing all over the ceiling.  When I asked the doctor about this drug he did not tell me it came from a poisonous plant that sedates and has hypnotic properties, but he did reference my “old and tired uterus.” Lots of drugs that addicts adore come from plants. However, this son was fine and gorgeous I thought, and I was alive. Thank you, dear God. I also thanked myself and Bill, my father for not shooting us, and this baby—but not this doctor.

I would also soon thank Ether who took on the task of cleaning up my mess— not only all the sheets and blankets but the entire blood-soaked mattress. I do not know how she did it, but I was in awe—at her physical strength and ingenuity but also at the way she plunged into this task with utter commitment, you could say devotion.

Ether was a blessing in many ways, mostly I think for my mother who had moved from a city to a busy suburb, and now to this practically rural area. My parents had moved there because an attorney had advised them that labor for their new business would be cheaper in this area. Mom was lonely at first and felt out of place. Ether, though still a maid, became also a friend in whom Mom confided from time to time.  I know this because a few years later after my sister and her family moved into the house next door—a commune no less!—Ether commented that my mother had one good daughter and one bad one. I was the bad one. Laurie my sister was the good one. I resented Ether so did not get to know her very well. Her perception, however, was accurate, because I was feeling overwhelmed, alone in a marriage that wasn’t working well, drinking too much, and inwardly planning my breakaway from my mother’s lovingly intended control. Sometimes I wasn’t sure if my mother was living her own life or mine. I was inwardly preparing to consider a little job all my own. It was the 70s!

Chapter XXXI.  The Silent Divide

In time Willie James got out of prison, and Ether rejoined him back in Stamford. My children had loved Ether, and I trusted her completely with their care. I felt not so much love but admiring affection for this black woman who was so so much more than a maid. She did not do the cooking, but boy, could she iron—not a wrinkle unnoticed. Willie James, for his part, made a tea cart with wheels for my parents as a gift of gratitude for their taking care of Ether. Sometimes, it is hard to tell just who is taking care of whom. 

I noticed, however, that Ether never ate meals with my parents or the family whenever we all had dinner together. She had her own room and bath and must have eaten her meals there. That did seem strange. She was part of the family, and not.

Looking back, I do think that this separate eating was race-based. This made no sense at all given other interactions, and yet I was embedded in a family and class system that held dear the so-called “maid” phenomenon. It was clearly racist although it had little to do with mutual affection. Oddly, it had to do only with eating together, chiefly dinner. Was this racism by social distancing? Was it manifested with unique rigidity at the dining room table? Why didn’t Ether eat with us? Would I now invite my friend, Carol Lee, whom I'd first betrayed to my dining table? The irony of this strange tacitly-agreed-upon silent divide happening at a dining room table did not escape me. I had years earlier first met God under another dining room table.  

I took little time, however, to reflect much on this divide. I was too busy questioning the status of women and my own in particular—beyond motherhood and my own “maid-ism.”

2020.09.20 Breathe!

I often suggest to people that they breathe, that is, stop a moment, take a deep breath, and give your racing mind and body a rest. This is great spiritual wisdom. I should try it myself sometime.

It is 2020. Our whole world right now is being forced—by an ugly and lethal traveling virus, political mayhem, and racial pain—to breathe, even if it is behind a mask.

I already have a respiratory illness and need medication to help me breathe. I also need yoga, exercise, and writing—nice and sedentary yet full of spiritual electricity. I believe this: there is nowhere God is not, no one in whom divine grace is absent, even if interrupted by death itself.  

Therefore, to give myself and my readers a break and a breath, I resurrect my 2005 rewrite of a dear old hymn: “Breathe On Me Breath of God”.

Breathe In Me Breath of God

Breathe in me, breath of God,
Healing my lungs’ disease
So that I may in purest love
Breathe in and breathe out with thee.  

Breathe in me breath of God,
For when my life is done
And my sweet lungs lose all their pow’r
My last breath and yours are one

I now sing it daily as a prayer. Sing with  me.


The composer of the hymn text on which I riffed, was Edwin Hatch (1835-1889), an Anglican theologian, student of languages, and Bishop of Manchester, noted for his independence and extreme study habits. He does look a bit harried.

Hatch, a graduate of Oxford, and his wife Evelyn, had one son and four daughters.  His hymn was published privately in 1878, not too long before he died at 54.  It reveals his deep faith and his spirituality of hope, and was published publicly in 1886. The hymn tune #508 in The Hymnal 1982 is Nova Vita, by Lister Peace who died in 1969. The first stanza gives us a clue to Hatch’s state of mind: “Breathe on me, breathe of God, fill me with life anew, that I may love what thou dost love and do what thou wouldst do.” He sought peace of mind, reassurance, and unity with the Divine.  He was running out of breath.  Some days it feels so, eh?

Breathe.

2020.09.13 My "Racism"—Anecdotal History. Part Ten. In The Dark.

 

Chapter XXV. Alabama 

 

Our two daughters Bev and Jill were four and three when their brother, Robert William Brakeman, III, affectionately known as R.B. or Rob, was born. It felt very odd to be praised for having a boy child when I had nothing to do with it—except to endure a terrifyingly hasty but late placenta praevia birth. The placenta (supposed to be the afterbirth) emerged ahead of the infant. Blood spurted and flowed, and somewhere in all that bloody mess was a tiny baby boy, healthy at 7 pounds and some ounces. The pediatrician was summoned. She informed us with steady tactlessness that we wouldn’t know for six months whether this oxygen-deprived baby would be retarded or not. I found another pediatrician and knew pretty quickly myself that this child was not retarded in any way— unless you can count near-professional thumb-sucking.

Rob was a toddler in diapers when we moved to Anniston, Alabama for Bill’s new job as electronic engineer with a start-up cable television company. In Alabama we would meet black people for sure I thought. No such thing. The only black person I met and got to know well was a delightful woman I’ll call Elvira, the neighbor’s childcare person—and “maid”.  She became a good friend and gave me lots of advice about how to clean our black-and-white tiled entryway floor. I’d purchased a huge floor waxer. I followed the directions with care. Those tiles just wouldn’t stay clean—black tiles ran and heaved black specks onto the lily white tiles. There was no vice versa. This was a poignant metaphor, which I missed, yet lovely Elvira addressed my frustration with affection: “Too much cleaning, honey. Leave ‘em be.”

Alabama, of course, was comfortably segregated in the late1960s. The house we’d bought was—of course again— in an all-white neighborhood. The uptown Episcopal church was advertised (seriously, with a sign!) as segregated, and the downtown church was more Baptist liturgically than Episcopal. I felt deprived and angry, but I passed off the obvious racism as being Southern. It was the South’s fault. Not mine.

Chapter XXVI.  Jonah

Sometimes one is in the dark for obvious or willful reasons, and sometimes one is in the dark because, well, it just happens almost inevitably by circumstance. Amazing things grow in the dark. Take Jonah.  

As was the imaginative wont of my mind, I suddenly conjured the putative biblical Jonah. The poor guy couldn’t win. He wasn’t even an official prophet of Yahweh, yet he got tagged by the voice of God to hightail it to Ninevah to reprimand the people for exceedingly bad behavior—sleeping around and more. Jonah turned down the divine offer, knowing its danger would be tantamount to one more tour in “Afghanistan”. He fled across the sea. A storm kicked up. The sailors all prayed to several variations of divinity, but the storm didn’t abate. Jonah slept through the storm. (Does this behavior sound familiar?) Horrified, they threw him overboard as he himself suggested they do to appease God and the storm. It worked for the storm but not so well for their consciences. Then, alas, God sent a “large fish” to swallow him. At this point Jonah’s prayers get serious, reciting all his pious deeds and finally confessing his powerlessness. Only God delivers! True that, because God caused the whale to throw up, and splat! Jonah flew out, landed on terra firma and headed for Ninevah. There his errand of rebuke failed to change evil hearts, and he ended up bitterly humiliated and furious at God who did not repent. And there you have it. Beware of your pious expectations of God. Jonah was left in the dark. You could be too.

The tale of Jonah is a fable, yet in every tale there is deeper meaning if you wake up and suss it out. Let yourself identify with whatever the plight of the main character might be. I have always wondered what Jonah thought about while he was in the dark.

 Chapter XXVII.   Leviathan

The great vision given to the miserable in-the-dark Job was a visual tour of all Creation, including the great Leviathan. Job was wowed enough to feel humbled but not humiliated. The mere sight of Leviathan in breach could knock the wind out of anyone’s sails. Have you ever been on a whale watch when the whale, all 100-foot/170 tons of flesh, came close alongside the boat, puffed out its foul breath from its blowhole, then reeled, plunged deep beneath the boat, emerged on the other side, dove again, flashing its mammoth tale at the shrieking fans, then leapt straight up, exposing its front side to the now-cheering crowd. All of this is just the foreplay understand. Who wouldn’t be awestruck? I was. Job was. Jonah not so much—yet.

In fairness to Jonah, his view was from inside the beast’s belly. He remembered God and prayed wildly that his indigestible presence alone would cause this beast to retch him out. Would Jonah then be humbled enough to face Ninevah, a city for which God cared deeply, just as much as God cared for little Jonah apparently? What happened to Jonah in the dark?

Chapter XXVIII.  Breaching

As I write this brief anecdotal history of my racism, it is 2020, and the world, although still in the dark about the depths of racial injustice, is on the brink of a new breaching similar to the one I would personally embark on back in the 1970s.  

Therefore, in the name of HOPE, FAITH, and LOVE, I breach the rigors of my chronological structure to include below a 2020 poem by Canadian poet and spiritual director Antoinette Voûte Roeder. Her three collections include The Many Singings, Poems for Meditation, and The Space Between, all available with Amazon. This poem perfectly reflects what might happen in the dark—to Jonah, to me, and to this twenty-first century world as yet riven with ignorance, conflict, fear, and death—all racially bound together.

Jonah’s Whale: Not the Whole Story

Perhaps he liked it down there
in the dark cave of its belly

Delivered at last
from God’s demands
and the press of people
to a sanctuary quite unlikely
to be shared with others .

Now he had time to reflect on the past.

When at last he found
the cave inside
himself and knew it to
be sacred, out he vaulted
with great bravura
to claim his mantle
in the world.

The motto of this tale? Don’t mess with Leviathan unless you’re prepared to spend some time in the dark and emerge changed.  Also, do not assume or presume anything about God whose will empowers human agency—in other words, you and God make things good and right together and this pandemic is not the whole story.