Whale

IF IT WAS ACTUALLY A WHALE that swallowed Jonah on his voyage to Tarshish, it couldn't have been the kind of right whale you find in those waters because their gullets aren't big enough. Maybe it was a sperm whale, because they can handle something the size of a prophet without batting an eye. Or maybe, since the Hebrew word means only "great fish," it wasn't a whale at all, but a people-eating shark, some of whom attain lengths as great as thirty feet. But whatever it was, this much is certain.

No matter how deep it dove and no matter how dark the inside of its belly, no depth or darkness was enough to drown out the sound of Jonah's prayer. "I am cast out from thy presence. How shall I again look upon thy holy temple?" (Jonah 2:4), the intractable and waterlogged old man called out from sixty fathoms, and Yahweh heard him, and answered him, and Jonah's relief at being delivered from the whale can hardly have been any greater than the whale's at being delivered of Jonah.

Jonah 1:17-2:10

-Originally published in Peculiar Treasures and later in Beyond Words

Water

FOR NINE MONTHS we breathe in it. The sight of water in oceans, rivers, and lakes is soothing to the spirit as almost nothing else. To swim in it is to become as weightless and untrammeled as in dreams. The wake of a ship, the falling of a cataract, and the tumbling of a brook can hold us spellbound for hours, and in times of drought we feel as parched in our being as the lawn that crackles beneath our feet.

Air is our element, but water is our heart's delight. "My flesh faints for thee," the Psalmist sings, "as in a dry and weary land where no water is" (63:1). And among the last things that Jesus ever said, and among the most human, were the words, "I thirst" (John 19:28). 

-Originally published in Beyond Words

War

WE CANNOT BE reminded too often that the largely middle-aged or elderly politicians, generalissimos, and assorted heads of state who declare war on each other take no part in the dirty business of actually waging it, but leave that instead to the young. The attempt is made to secure their participation by stirring them up into a patriotic fervor, but if that doesn't work there are laws to compel it, with the result that they find themselves faced willy-nilly with having to fight to the death if necessary for a cause that a great many of them neither understand nor in their hearts consider worth paying anything like such a price for. When their bodies start coming back in bags like rubbish, they are honored as having given their lives for their country, whereas the truth of the matter is that more often than not they did not so much give them as have them wrested from them whether that's what they had in mind or not.

Can there be any doubt that if the fighting were to be left to the leaders themselves, the story would be a very different one? It is a thought worth pursuing. Many of them are overweight. Many can't see without glasses. A few wear hearing aids or pacemakers and feel faint at the sight of blood. Even the younger ones who have kept in some kind of shape have in all likelihood never so much as punched another human being in the nose, let alone aimed a gun at one in anger. But no matter. Theirs it is to do or die, and one pictures them in their business suits and long dresses, their burnooses and caftans and saris, as they head off to do it armed with weapons they have no idea how to use and ultimatums, principles, and slogans that suddenly seem equally useless, and with their hearts in their mouths.

Can there be any question as to how long it would take them to turn around and go home? Can any crazy scenario we manage to dream up be even half as crazy as war is crazy? Can there be any doubt that Jesus was speaking only the simple truth when he said that those who live by the sword will perish by the sword?

The lucky ones are the ones who perish all at once and get it over with. The others are those who still have years and years left for remembering the handsome young men and strong young women who were once the fairest and dearest they had.

-Originally published in Beyond Words

Vocation

VOCATION COMES FROM the Latin vocare, "to call," and means the work a person is called to by God.

There are all different kinds of voices calling you to all different kinds of work, and the problem is to find out which is the voice of God rather than of society, say, or the superego, or self-interest.

By and large a good rule for finding out is this: The kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work (a) that you need to do and (b) that the world needs to have done. If you really get a kick out of your work, you've presumably met requirement (a), but if your work is writing cigarette ads, the chances are you've missed requirement (b). On the other hand, if your work is being a doctor in a leper colony, you have probably met requirement (b), but if most of the time you're bored and depressed by it, the chances are you have not only bypassed (a), but probably aren't helping your patients much either.

Neither the hair shirt nor the soft berth will do. The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet. 

-Originally published in Wishful Thinking and later in Beyond Words

Virtue

NEXT TO THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS, the seven cardinal virtues are apt to look pale and unenterprising, but appearances are notoriously untrustworthy.

Prudence and temperance, taken separately, may not be apt to get you to your feet cheering, but when they go together, as they almost always do, that's a different matter. The chain smoker or the junkie, for instance, who exemplifies both by managing to kick the habit, can very well have you throwing your hat in the air, especially if it happens to be somebody whom for personal reasons you'd like to have around a few years longer. And the courage involved isn't likely to leave you cold either. Often it's the habit kicker's variety that seems the most courageous.

If you think of justice as sitting blindfolded with a scale in her hand, you may have to stifle a yawn, but if you think of a black judge acquitting a white racist of a false murder charge, it can give you gooseflesh.

The faith of a child taking your hand in the night is as moving as the faith of Mother Teresa among the untouchables, or Bernadette facing the skeptics at Lourdes, or Abraham, age seventy-five, packing up his bags for the Promised Land. And hope is the glimmer on the horizon that keeps faith plugging forward, of course, the wings that keep it more or less in the air.

Maybe it's only love that turns things around and makes the seven deadly sins be the ones to look pale and unenterprising for a change. Greed, gluttony, lust, envy, and pride are no more than sad efforts to fill the empty place where love belongs, and anger and sloth just two things that may happen when you find that not even all seven of them at their deadliest ever can. 

-Originally published in Whistling in the Dark and later in Beyond Words