The Mother of Jonah: Life Does Not Always Go According to Plan
Life does not always go according to plan.
I read about a phenomenon in Marin County, California. Someone put up a sign on the Interstate: “Perform a random act of kindness today.” Sure enough, reports came in, slowly at first, of people paying the toll for cars behind them … people stopping to help stranded vehicles …. One man was caught in traffic. His cell not working, he created and made visible: LATE FOR ANNIVERSARY DINNER. CALL MYWIFE AND TELL HER I LOVE HER (#).
He came home an hour later to find that seventy people had called, one of them sent a bouquet of flowers, another sent a voucher for dinner for two at the local poshest resort. Over a four month period, crime dropped 7 percent. (Rosh Hashana Readings, Elkins)
For me life did not go according to my plan or at least my hope of becoming a parent. My life is changed by this truth, not ruined, just different. I have had to think about things differently, more expansively, more mercifully in many ways. A friend gave me a copy of Christiane Northrup’s book Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom, where I read this, from Alexis DeVeaux, a mother and sponsor of Madre, A Latin American relief organization, in the section on fertility as a metaphor: “Motherhood is not simply the organic process of giving birth; it is understanding the needs of the world.”
This my aspiration: to understand the needs of the world and to do what I can to effect tikkun olam, making the world whole.
It seems to me that motherhood involves a lot of holding close and letting go at the same time. It is a space that must hold both/and.
I’d like to share with you a midrash – an imaginative tale that lives in the in-between space. Midrash is a literary technique, a mindset really, on reading the in between spaces of sacred text. It\’s a chance to explore what is unsaid, the possibility of validating our holy capacity of human imagination.
As odd as it may seem, let’s begin with the story of Jonah. First a little background. God directs Jonah to go to Nineveh. Jonah disobeys, boards a ship and heads instead for Tarshish. A great storm brews and the sailors throw Jonah into the sea where he is swallowed by a whale. After three days, the fish vomits Jonah up onto dry land, and three days after that, Jonah goes to Nineveh to fulfill his mission, preaching a message of repentance. The story of Jonah ends with the protagonist learning about love and compassion.
Like our lives, Jonah’s path is not straight line.
His story begins, “God spoke to Jonah, son of Amitai and this is what God said.” Amitai was Jonah’s father, but I suspect strongly that another human being was involved in Jonah’s birth as well: his mother, whose name we do not know, and who is never mentioned in the book of Jonah.
In a later commentary, the rabbis do tell us, however, that she is none other than the widow who aided the prophet Elijah in Zaraphat, a city on the Mediterranean coast of modern Lebanon, during a great drought. Says the book of Kings:
9 “Go at once to Zarephath in the region of Sidon and stay there. I have directed a widow there to supply you with food.” 10 So Elijah went to Zarephath. When he came to the town gate, a widow was there gathering sticks.
The story in First Kings goes on to say that Elijah called to her and asked, “Would you bring me a little water in a jar so I may have a drink?” 11 As she was going to get it, he called, “And bring me, please, a piece of bread.”
12 She replied, “I don’t have any bread—only a handful of flour in a jar and a little olive oil in a jug. I am gathering a few sticks to take home and make a meal for myself and my son, that we may eat it—and then we will surely die.”
13 Elijah said to her, “Don’t be afraid. Go home and do as you have said. But first make a small loaf of bread for me from what you have and bring it to me, and then make something for yourself and your son. 14 For this is what the God of Israel, says: ‘The jar of flour will not be used up and the jug of oil will not run dry until the day the Lord sends rain on the land.’”
15 She went and did as Elijah had told her. So there was food every day for Elijah and for the woman and her family. 16 For the jar of flour was not used up and the jug of oil did not run dry.
Later the widow’s young son grew gravely ill – some even say he died – and in the Book of Kings Elijah said,
19 “Give me your son,” He took him from her arms and carried him to the upper room where he was staying … 20 Then he cried out, “let this boy’s life return to him!” 22 and the boy’s life returned to him, and he lived. 23 Elijah picked up the child and carried him down from the room into the house. He gave him to his mother and said, “Look, your son is alive!”
So this is what we know about the mother of Jonah: she fell in love with Amitai, whose name means “my truth”, married, had a child, was widowed too soon, hosted the Elijah the Prophet, witnesses miracles, lost her son, saw the resurrection of the dead, and lived to see her son grow to be a prophet and a man of insight, Jonah himself.
She did not plan on being widowed young, nor being impoverished, nor meeting Elijah. She did not plan on the miracle of the oil and flour, she did not plan on seeing the resurrection of the dead, nor on having her son be called to be a prophet and having him resist, nor did she plan on growing old. Life did not go according to her plans – in some ways dreadfully and in others, thankfully, blessedly.
What might the now elderly mother of Jonah, looking back over the many twists and turns of fate and happenstance, say to that young, worried, pained version of herself?
An Original Midrash
I sit beside the great sea, the great sea that made my Jonah who he is, the great sea beside which I sat when I thought I twice lost him – once in his youth, and again when he disappeared before turning up in Nineveh. I sit beside the sea to cry the tears of as a young widow, when I lost my Amitai and I learned that my plans, my careful strategies, were not a map of future reality but were blinders the cut me off from both the truth of sorrow and of joy.
As I sit, a child walks by, picking up sticks and tossing them out into the water, and I remember when I too walked picking up sticks to build the fire I thought would be my last when Jonah and I knew hunger during the great drought. The child’s sticks float out to sea until they are invisible, and I wonder where they land on some distant shore I will never see.
I see my young, worried self picking up sticks, but she cannot see me. If I could speak to her, if I could say the wisdom of age, I would try to ease her furrowed brow and assure her that although life will not go the way she plans, All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.[1]
I would tell her to make more mistakes next time, to relax, to be sillier when life allows it, to take fewer things seriously and take more chances.[2] I would tell her that she may not have a choice about getting wrinkles, but she does have a choice in how they are developed. Now that I am old, I have deep lines around my eyes from countless moments of joy, but she cannot know yet know that. My smiles have come from knowing how much I am loved and how much love I have had to give. I have upturned lines around my mouth from holding a gentle smile for all humanity, for at least a few hours each day, a lesson she will learn only later, from Jonah.
My hands are creased from years of touching and giving to others, and my forehead, her forehead, is lined with thoughtfulness and free from frowns but she cannot know that now. My arms have worked hard in both reaching out and in receiving, a wisdom she will gain from Elijah. And my-heart-her-heart will be alive with love until the moment it ceases to beat, and I trust, from my truth, my love, my Amitai, that love lives forever.[3]
She cannot know this because right now, things are not following the path she expected, wanted, and she afraid and aggrieved. In the midst of her great suffering, she cannot yet feel the importance of surrendering to surprise [4] and allowing, a little more, life to be messy and beautiful and unexpected: out of the blue, like the great sea.
If I could speak to her, I would say, there is no controlling life. “Try corralling a lightning bolt, containing a tornado. Dam a stream, and it will create a new channel. Resist, and the tide will sweep you off your feet. Allow, and grace will carry you to higher ground. The only safety lies in letting it all in- the wild with the weak; fear, fantasies, failures and success. When loss rips off the doors of the heart, or sadness veils your vision with despair, practice becomes simply bearing the truth. In the choice to let go of your known way of being, the whole world is revealed to your new eyes.” [5]
I would say to that young, worried woman I once was, “Let go of the ways you thought life would unfold: the holding of plans or dreams or expectations – let it all go. Save your strength to swim with the tide. The choice to fight what is here before you now will only result in struggle, fear, and desperate attempts to flee from the very energy you long for. Let go. Let it all go and flow with the grace that washes through your days whether you received it gently or with all your quills raised to defend against invaders.
Take this on faith; the mind may never find the explanations that it seeks, but you will move forward nonetheless. Let go, and the [blue] wave’s crest will carry you to unknown shores, beyond your wildest dreams or destinations. Let it all go and find the place of rest and peace, and certain transformation.” [6]
[1] Julian of Norwich
[2] Nadine Stair, “If I had My Life to Live Over Again”.
[3] Adapted from Lee Jampolsky, Smile for No Good Reason
[4] The Seven Whispers: A Spiritual Practice for Times Like These, Christina Baldwin
[5] “Allow” by Dana Faulds from Go In and In: Poems From the Heart of Yoga, Danna Faulds
[6] “Let It Go”, Go In and In, Danna Faulds.
