Measure the walls. Count the ribs. Notch the long days.
Look up for blue sky through the spout. Make small fires
with the broken hulls of fishing boats. Practice smoke signals.
Call old friends, and listen for echoes of distant voices.
Organize your calendar. Dream of the beach. Look each way
for the dim glow of light. Work on your reports. Review
each of your life’s ten million choices. Endure moments
of self-loathing. Find the evidence of those before you.
Destroy it. Try to be very quiet, and listen for the sound
of gears and moving water. Listen for the sound of your heart.
Be thankful that you are here, swallowed with all hope,
where you can rest and wait. Be nostalgic. Think of all
the things you did and could have done. Remember
treading water in the center of the still night sea, your toes
pointing again and again down, down into the black depths.
~ Dan Albergotti “Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale” from The Boatloads
“In my distress I called to the Lord,
and he answered me.
From deep in the realm of the dead I called for help,
and you listened to my cry.
You hurled me into the depths,
into the very heart of the seas,
and the currents swirled about me;
all your waves and breakers
swept over me.
I said, ‘I have been banished
from your sight;
yet I will look again
toward your holy temple.’
The engulfing waters threatened me,[b]
the deep surrounded me;
seaweed was wrapped around my head.
To the roots of the mountains I sank down;
the earth beneath barred me in forever.
But you, Lord my God,
brought my life up from the pit.
“When my life was ebbing away,
I remembered you, Lord,
and my prayer rose to you,
to your holy temple.
“Those who cling to worthless idols
turn away from God’s love for them.
But I, with shouts of grateful praise,
will sacrifice to you.
What I have vowed I will make good.
I will say, ‘Salvation comes from the Lord.“
~from Jonah 2
“It is a childish work—the whale has the head of a dog
and Jonah looks suspiciously fresh.”
—www.artbible.info
In candied red, the white-bearded
prophet emerges hands still clasped in prayer,
clean, really clean, maybe too clean, first-day-
of-school clean, baptism clean. It is a childish
painting, perhaps, the punished coming up
for air after a three-day, divine timeout,
his begging and pleading inside this flesh
box, sincere or not, but he’s out, old and fresh
in a world around him, Brueghel is sure
to make clear, swirling blue-black and solid
brown, the earth’s bruising, perhaps a wish
of healing yellow in the distance, a light
faded behind the eye’s focus. The dogfish
eyes big and rolling back mouth open
like the cave like the tomb like the brown creek
carp we refuse to touch hate to catch squishy
and formless but counted nonetheless. But
he will dirty himself again after Nineveh
under the vine cussing at God telling
God His own business, and he will forget
the welcoming red the fresh fruit color
of that cloak—the thin (or thinning) clearing
in the background beyond sea and storm,
even the mouth as exit as release.
He will soon forget to consider how
suspicious it is for a man like him
sitting in death’s darkness for three days
to come out so clean so bright so forgiven.
~Jacob Stratman “a poem for my sons when they yell at God” from Christian Century
As I grumble about what I think is wrong with the world, I fail to understand that God has heard much grumbling from His children before. And much of what is wrong with the world is also wrong with me.
It must get tiresome, listening to it.
Perhaps that is why Jonah, who wanted to die rather than deal with the sinful city he had been sent to redeem, was given a little respite for three days to think things over until he understood what his role was.
By counting all those ribs inside the whale, he was thinking about all the things he had done wrong and all the things he should have done, but didn’t.
Whenever I stand in a structure with powerful beams towering over and surrounding me, I too feel swallowed whole. I am no more than a tiny speck within a vast organism.
Nevertheless, small as I am, I still matter to God. I am being prepared to be spit out, to do what I’m supposed to do, and not be concerned nearly as much with my disgruntlement with the rest of the world as with my disgruntlement with myself.
Swallowed whole by hope. Spit out forgiven.
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