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From the Deep Watercolor and Thread 12” x 24” diptych (Sold) Sometimes I feel like I’m drowning under the realities of life. Challenges, unknowns and unfulfilled expectations bring worry and even temptations to “go it alone”. Jonah also tried to run the other way. Having been given a directive from God to go to Nineveh, he chose his own solution and went the opposite direction. The story says Jonah eventually remembered the LORD in a prayer of thanksgiving for deliverance and was rescued from his near death experience. This image of restless waves on the disorderly water presents the dilemma of the pushing and pulling that can drag me down or force me up when I try to do things myself. How can I make my way up from the deep? I read an excerpt from Thomas Merton’s Book of Hours and it gave me hope that going down deep sometimes “is” the rescue. Hopefully the following words will make sense:
When summoned to silence, we abandon thinking, letting ourselves sink like a stone to the bottom of a fathomless inner sea. In the quiet depths we sense waves of wordless, quiet praise lapping against our hearts, entraining us to rhythms of a peace that is not conditional on events of our lives, but on the quality of our deepening communion with God as we keep our daily appointments with mystery. When I’m being swallowed up by activities, events and my own thoughts, my greatest rescue is the deepening of my faith by keeping appointments with God and His words written so many years ago. They have become the gold lifeline of intervention that keeps me facing upward through whatever turmoil I’m enduring.
References: Jonah 1-2 Thomas Merton, a Book of Hours, edited by Kathleen Deignan, p. 41
©phyllis thomas 2009
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