Just Your Average Jonah

This morning I awoke at 6 a.m. in a panic. Yesterday I found out that the job I was hoping to get for my upcoming move to L.A. fell through. The job would have made the transition to an expansive, expensive city less treacherous. Bah to treachery, I says. And then treachery bit me in the rear.

So, since I was awake anyway, I got up. I drank some coffee. I took a shower. I still had a half hour before I had to leave for work, so I did something that I haven’t done for a long time: I read the Bible, the book of Jonah to be more specific. I sat on the couch, and Francis the Kitten jumped up on me. I read the story aloud, but Francis didn’t care. She was more occupied with kneading my breasts with her paws and purring like a space rocket, if space rockets can purr. Reading aloud is the only way I can keep my mind on task lately — otherwise I start thinking about all the obstacles ahead of me in my trek to California, and before you know it, my insides feel like putty and I’m terrified of the Not Knowing of it all.

I started reading at the beginning, which is, as Maria von Trapp so lovingly sings to us, “A very good place to start.”

The first verse says, “The LORD gave this message to Jonah, son of Amittai: ‘Get up and go to the great city of Nineveh.’”

Of course, I am hyper-sensitive to great cities because I’m moving to one, and of course, my first thought was, “God is telling me through this verse that I need to go to a great city!” (I had to cling to this idea because my father is not named Amittai.) But then I read this verse:

“[...] He bought a ticket and went on board, hoping that by going away to the west, he could escape from the LORD” (1:3)

Crap! I thought. Going away to the west means that I’m running from God. No wonder those early Californians were outlaws.

And then Francis, wise old feline that she is, bit my ear and whispered, “You fool! You cant base your interpretations on your emotional responses. This is not the Holy Spirit talking to you; this is your own existential crisis flaling for a buoy amidst stormy seas.” I’m telling you — it was something straight out of Narnia. And then Francis’ head and torso suddenly turned human, and I gave her my handkerchief.

I love it that the Bible says it all so dead-pan. It’s the straight-man to Jonah’s comedy act. Imagine the story of Jonah as a Woody Allen film:

Jonah is lying below deck, asleep, while a storm is destroying the boat. The sailors on the boat are certainly not faint-hearted. They’ve seen their fair share of life-threatening activity. Though Jonah’s story takes place around 793 B.C., I can’t help but imagine these sailors in bright yellow rubber slickers, with busy salt-covered beards, boasting in a tavern while guzzling ale from their galoshes.

This storm, this was kick-ass, too wild for bragging rights. The sailors would walk away wide-eyed, shaking their heads, yet Jonah is sleeping like a teenager. The sailors wake him, and they ask, “Who are you? Where do you work? Where are you from? What ethnicity are you?” Jonah replies, “I am a Hebrew, and I worship the LORD, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the land.” Then sheepishly, kicking the deck with the toe of his sandal, he mumbles, “I’m running away from the LORD.” Then the sailors know the solution to their dilemma. Like a virgin into a great volcano, they throw Jonah overboard: a sacrifice to appease the gods.

God “arranges” for a fish to swallow Jonah. I love the verb “arrange.” It evokes the image of the Great Executive’s secretary with a calendar and pencil in hand, phoning schools of fish to find one who is available: “God would like to know if you would be available to swallow a man on Wednesday around 4 p.m. You are? Oh, wonderful! He will be so pleased.” After the fish vomits Jonah, God tells him again to go to the great city of Nineveh, and this time, Jonah has seemingly learned his lesson. Nineveh is a city so large that “it took three days to see it all.” Later, the book says that there are over 120,000 people in Nineveh. The statistics made me giggle because Los Angeles and surrounding areas have over 3,000,000 people. When I visited London a few years ago with Friend Amy, we walked all over the city for four days and only made a small dent in everything to see. We could have spent a month in the Victoria Albert Museum alone.

So, Jonah’s Nineveh is like my Los Angeles: the great city then compared to the great city now. Jonah goes to Nineveh and completely changes the place by delivering the message God told him to deliver. The Ninevites repent and rejoice, but Jonah does not rejoice with them. He puts on sackcloth and ashes and grieves. He builds himself a little brooding tent outside the city where he can go to sulk. God spares the Ninevites instead of destroying them. God makes him look like a fool. Jonah must be forgetting that he didn’t need much help in this area. The kid was just swallowed and vomitted by a fish. And he was thrown over the side of a ship by a band of swarthy sailors. Geek. Though God just worked a miracle through Jonah in spite of Jonah’s fear, disobedience and self-absorbtion, Jonah is still angry. The very characteristics that have just spared Jonah’s life are the ones he rebukes God about: “I knew that you were a gracious and compassioante God, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love. I knew how easily you could cancel your plans for destroying these people. Just kill me now, LORD! I’d rather be dead than alive because nothing I predicted is going to happen.”

In spite of Jonah’s sulking, God again “arranges” a leafy plant to grow over Jonah and keep the sun from scorching him. But again, he throws in that ol’ godly curve ball: “But God also prepared a worm!” I love it that this sentence ends with an exclamation point, and I also love it that he “prepares” the worm, like a coach sending his star player into the game: “Youre going to go out there and chomp the stem of that leaf just like I taught you! Fundamentals, FUNDAMENTALS! Remember the play book — chew fast and chew hard! Be a Pitt Bull, not a Poodle! Ready? TEAM!” And then Jonah’s plant dies. Likewise, Jonah is so distraught, he wants to die. Sad life.

I needed this dose of humor this morning. Before I read Jonah, I had worked myself up into a tivvy of untrust: How in the wonka can I afford to take this next step in my life? How can I go when so many obstacles stand in my way? I am afraid. It would be so much easier to turn around and walk the other way, to stay at a job that I know well where people love me, in a city where rent is low and friendly folks abound. Last night The Boyfriend told me that it’s good that I won’t settle for this, that I’m reaching for something more in my life, and of course that’s going to be scary.

After I read Jonah, I tried to pray. I meant to say all sorts of things, like “God, you know how much I want this, so much that my arms ache all the way to my fingertips” (as if bad poetry makes prayer more effective) or “God, I will simply DIE if you don’t give me California” (heh — sound familiar?). But the real prayer began with “God, I believe that you will…” and ended with simply, “God, I believe.”