When We Are the Whale in the Jonah Story

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This month, I share the Meditation Prayer offered on September 19, 2021 in honor of Yom Kippur, wherein the Jonah story is read each year in Jewish synagogues and homes, and as part of the conclusion of our series on Trauma.  The full service is available here.

This morning I’m going to ask us to think a bit more on the Jonah story that Robin shared.  But for this time of meditation, of deep listening that some call prayer, I want us to think not about Jonah for a moment, but about the whale.

First, let us gather ourselves up for this moment.

We call our attention to only what is before us.

If that means the chair that holds you, the floor on which your legs rest, the table that holds the computer, the smells of coffee, or if that means the physical or sensory things around you, call your attention to those things.

Lean into them with wonder and curiosity.

Describe to yourself what coffee smells like; find the words that describe the texture of the chair. Call your attention to it.

If within your body, dancing for attention in your brain, if there are thoughts, if within your heart there is an ache or an excitement, don’t call it a distraction. For a moment, imagine that even these might be some type of prayer.

That fear.  That joy.  That “to-do list,” even.  Go there.  Let it speak.  Then, listen.

Breathe.
Wiggle your fingers.
Stretch your ankles.

And try to imagine yourself as the whale.You have just swallowed whole an entire life; an entire world.

You have just swallowed up your partner and your ex-partners and the partners you wished you had; your children, on their best days and their worst days; the children you wished you had, and the ones you had who are no longer here.
You have just swallowed up your parents, your siblings, your neighbors, your chosen family, your family you’ve turned away from and those who have turned away from you.

Whole lives; entire worlds.

Swimming within you are all the ways they pushed and pulled inside your body, changed your insides and made you wonder about what was inside your very own person.

And it’s not just people swirling inside you, swimming next to your insides.

You have just swallowed up an entire Facebook feed.
Baby pictures.
Political fights.
Images of food, drinks, sunsets, trees, dogs with hats.
More babies.

More fights.

You have just swallowed up an entire newspaper – no, an entire website of news – no, an entire twitter feed hash-tagged with something like, #worldnews.

Famine, war, the length a woman can walk for water, the way elephants visit the dead they bury, pandemics, endemics, the war on bodies: women’s bodies, trans bodies, black bodies, books about those bodies – banned.

You are the whale. You have just swallowed up an entire life; an entire world.

Enfleshed theologians write:

“Open your hearts

do not fear what may spill out

let anger speak its truth
let hurt tell its story
let sadness have the space to breathe
the aches of the world echo through our spirits

and the Holy holds it with us.”

Did you hear that? You, who are holding entire lives, entire worlds within your person:

“Open your hearts
do not fear what may spill out
let anger speak its truth
let hurt tell its story
let sadness have the space to breathe
the aches of the world echo through our spirits

and the Holy holds it with us.”

Do your translation if you must. Do not lose to overwhelm, to being stuffed so full with the world’s impossibilities because you find the word Holy to be impossible. Let the holy hold it with you.

Breathe.  Exhale.  Hear yourself exhale.  Hear yourself spill it out.

Spill it out.
Spill it out.
You are not a whale.

Spill it out.

And notice the way your body feels, the way you can swim, unencumbered, if only for this moment.

In Faith,
Rev. Kim