A whale of a tale

There’s an old saying about worries or cares being like having a monkey on your back. Yoga is sometimes referred to as the practice of quieting the monkey brain. The visual is not hard to grasp – a pesky, distracting monkey constantly turning your attention from whatever is before you, to instead satisfy the Curious George at your back.

I also love the pop song, “Shake it off” – though I don’t mean the Taylor Swift version. I mean Florence and the Machines: “It’s hard to dance with the devil on your back, so shake it off.” But come to think of it, Taylor’s song is pretty similar in intent: “Haters gonna hate-hate-hate-hate-hate. You just gotta shake it off, shake it off.”

There was once a man named Jonah. (Josie, seriously where are you going with this, now?)

Jonah was being called by God. I’m paraphrasing here but essentially God was saying, “Hey, go over to that town Nineveh and tell them to quit being so sinful. They’re doing all kinds of stuff that you know I don’t like. Please be my hands and be my voice and tell them to stop and find peace in me.”

If you’re familiar with the tale, you know that Jonah runs away to hide from the Lord’s call but God, ever clever and snarky, has Jonah get swallowed up into a fish (technically a mammal) that delivers him via express-whale to the shores of Nineveh. Jonah eventually does as God commands and tells the people of Nineveh to repent. They listen and their lives are renewed.

The story is one that I’ve known since I was a child but I may have never really heard it. How familiar is the experience of something tugging at your heart but your mind tells you to run far, far away. Then, just when you think your head is about to be buried in the sand, God upends the situation and you come face to face with it. “Do I say the thing I’m struggling to stifle?” “Do I offer up the help I’m scared will be rejected?”

It strikes me that Nineveh was the monkey on Jonah’s back. And while he was trying to just shake-shake-shake it off, God had a plan.

Nineveh is still a land of consequential actions, being situated on the shores of the Tigris River in Iraq. As recently as this week, ISIS soldiers were terrorizing the people of Nineveh Province.

I wonder if there might be some modern day Jonah trying to shake off a call from God to go serve His people in Nineveh. And can you imagine a bigger whale than ISIS to drive that Jonah to their shores? God be with you, Jonah. And a moment of thanks to realize my own monkey is not so hard to carry, quiet and 'shake it off' by answering God's call.