Jonah
On Yom Kippur we read about the reluctant prophet, Jonah. He is called on a Divine mission to warn the people of Nineveh and responds to this call by running in the opposite direction. Jonah’s journey traces our own circuitous pathway away from and back to our true nature and calling. Perhaps we read about his journey on Yom Kippur because his rebellion and t’shuvah are so dramatic and familiar. When we can recognize the voice of Jonah inside us, feel his revulsion, prayer and all-too-human predicament, then we can come naked and honest before the challenge of Yom Kippur.
The challenge of this day is to face the truth of what we’ve done, who we are and who we are called to become. When Jonah flees by ship to Tarshish and the ship is about to break into pieces because of a terrible storm, the sailors on that ship ask him the questions that can direct our journey back to our true calling. “How can you be sleeping?” they ask. There is a terrible storm raging around us and in us. Of course the question itself has the power to wake us up and it has the power to keep us from going back to sleep.
Open the eyes of your heart and acknowledge the storm that tosses you about. I know the storm to be the turbulent mind that pulls me from one distraction to the next. It is easier to sleep through the storm of the mind than to become the master of its power. A world or a life that is ruled by this stormy master of the mind sooner or later brings destruction to whatever it touches.
The sailors try to call Jonah and us back to our senses as they ask, What is your work? Where do you come from? What is your land? From which people are you? What is this you have done? We take the journey from our sleepy unconscious state back to awareness by remembering who we are and by inhabiting our incarnation fully and deliberately.
My work calls to me. My ancestors live inside me. The land of my birth has left its mark on me. All of my decisions follow me. I can only hide from the truth of who I am with the deceptive noisiness of a mind that is running wild. When Jonah comes into awareness through these questions, he at last takes responsibility for the storm. He asks to be thrown into the depths of the sea.
We forsake the surface mind and surrender at last to our own depths. Jonah’s story tells us that a great fish swallowed him and he sat inside the fish’s belly in what might be called a forced meditation retreat or vision quest for three days and three nights. During this time he finds his prayer and through a close brush with death, Jonah returns to face The Presence who has called him. Finally he accepts his Divine mission.
Life sends us on a forced retreat during an illness, an injury or when someone near us dies. Yom Kippur is also a kind of retreat where we leave the ordinary things of our lives and are sent to our depths to find the true voice of prayer and accept upon ourselves the mission we might otherwise try to avoid. In this acceptance the dry land appears beneath our feet, reminding us of the time that the Red Sea split sending us to our freedom.
Jonah becomes the most successful prophet in history. The people of Nineveh listen to him and repent and they are forgiven by God. But Jonah has not forgiven them. He remains angry and bitter. And this is how the story ends… with God questioning our anger, our judgement about others, our bitterness. Hahetev chara lach – “Is this anger good for you?” God asks.
Although many of our holy texts describe an angry, vengeful, jealous, and judging God, at the climax of Yom Kippur, our holiest day we are reminded that God loves us unconditionally. Those angry images are merely our projections. Jonah runs from God because of his own anger at the people of Nineveh. He runs from God who is El Chanun v’rachum, gracious and compassionate, because in the light of that loving presence Jonah must taste the bitterness of his own anger.
Faced with who he has become, Jonah chooses death over life. “I am angry enough to die,” he says.
As you search your heart this Yom Kippur and find that there are people for whom you’ve lost your compassion, situations that continually move you to despair, memories that carry the burden of shame, know that Jonah is in you choosing Death over Life. Before the gates of Neila close, listen to the compassionate voice of God asking, Hahetev chara lach: “Is this anger good for you?” Does the resentment that you carry keep you from “choosing life?” And beneath the resentment is there an old wound crying to be healed?
This is the day to begin the journey of healing… with the support of this loving community and in the purified air of Yom Kippur. After an argument among Aaron, Miriam, and their brother Moses, Miriam is struck with leprosy. Her brother Moses says the prayer that brings her back to health. In the healing of her body, Moses may have been healing his own soul. He said, “Ana El na R’fanala” (Please God please heal her). Heal the place in my soul that feels defeated and so chooses death over life.
May we hear the call that sends us onto the path of healing, healing ourselves that we might heal the world and know its holiness.
©2002 Shefa Gold. All rights reserved.