In reviewing this post, I realized will possibly only make sense to a select few people, and even then “possibly” is doing quite a bit of heavy lifting. I’m going to run with it anyway. You know who you are, and some day your whale will come… assuming it isn’t stuck in an air duct.
I had an acquaintance at Prin who liked to remind us that “When God closes the door, and shuts the windows, He usually leaves an air duct.” It was meant to be a scathing take on “When God closes a door, He opens a window,” but often it seemed much more appropriate for the situation, a window would make the escape too easy, there needs to be a struggle.
The air duct imagery brings to mind everyone’s favorite Christmas movie, Die Hard, where John McClane falls down a ventilation shaft, catches himself by his fingertips, and hauls himself into an air duct. “Come Out To The Coast – We’ll Get Together Have A Few Laughs,” McClane grumbles. There is no elegant solution to McClane’s dilemma, it is not as simple as opening a door, or even using a window, he is in an air duct, it was a struggle to get there, and the struggle will continue.
Let us set aside the air duct analogy for a moment, and turn to the other accidentally inspiring phrase that got me through some dark times at Prin. “One day your whale will come,” referring to the story of Jonah, who decided to make plans of his own, and made a run for it instead of following the path God had chosen. Everything was fine, but not actually fine, until one day the whale showed up and he had to follow through with his commitments via the stomach of a whale (large fish, sea creature, whatever, “whale” will suffice). Jonah shut his own doors, so God generously provided the air-duct-whale option. I wonder what my Bible & Christian Ethics professor would think of that sentence.
Is the arrival of the whale a promise or a threat? Should I wait for the whale to come, or do I struggle through the air ducts? Which one will be more fulfilling for my personal growth? Does it matter? Do I wait for the inevitable giant fish to show up and (metaphorically) swallow me to set me on my right path, or do I forge ahead through the duct work like a self-rescuing princess? What if the whale that is coming to reset my path and it gets stuck in an air duct? Pretty sure that’s something a petty god would do. Poor whale.
Is the whale’s arrival going to reset my life, kind of like the crane in Rainbow Road*? Can it set me back on the “right” path (whatever that happens to be) when I fall off? Is the whale a well-appointed like a luxury submarine (although, those come with their own problems), or like Monstro in Pinocchio? I did warn you there would be some mixed metaphors, I appear to have added questionable analogies as well.
This also raises the question if Jonah actually survives the experience in the whale, is he a lich, or is he revived from his experience like Lazarus? There is a whole reddit thread dedicated to this question, which only raises more questions… I digress again.
These analogies hinge on the belief in a god, ideally Bible God, the same God that I parted ways with in 2012, and yet I still take some comfort in them. I do not think Bible God is out there shutting doors, locking windows, and sending whales. I do not think Bible God exists. I do think people have created metaphors to rationalize their struggles. It is easier to feel that “God has set me on this path” than to acknowledge, and call out systemic inequality, racism, economic factors, poor choices you’ve made, etc. As the meme says, “everything happens for a reason, sometimes the reason is you made bad decisions.”
This is not a question that keeps me up at night, but I did think about it enough to write a blog post in one sitting. I do feel like I’m partially into the air duct of self-rescue, but part of me is hoping the whale will come and clarify things, although I’d rather not spend three days in stomach acid and salt water.
Having left the religion that claimed to be the “One True Path” (whatever), and being highly skeptical of the others, I’m not sure there is a “right” path for the whale to redirect me to, so I suppose I will rescue myself from the metaphorical air duct… or maybe I’m in a whale?
* I asked my husband what the thing that picked up the failed cars in Mario Cart was, and he told me it was a crane, and then he was confused and wanted to know the context of my question, and I explained the whale is like the crane, and it sets Jonah back on the right path, and he got very confused, apparently the additional context did not help.
kind-ism 