Hereunder

The Sign of Jonas

Gentle Visitors, it has now been week since the end of winter storm "Jonas," and we have had time to reflect on its significance.

The calamitous nature of the frigid nor'easter tells us that it was aptly named. Go back a few years in your mind and imagine, if you will, being locked-in with a house full of 'tweens for three days with the complete collection of the Jonas Brothers playing in a kind of Kafkaesque loop. This is no mere inconvenience or irritation, but a catastrophe -- causing one, perhaps, to question whether all of creation is no more than a cruel joke of a blind-eyed cosmos, or a pantheon of petulant and reckless gods punishing us beyond justice for our sins or simply torturing us out of capricious spite -- all through the agency of tragically conspiring meteorological conditions. 

But, then, on the third day, when all seems lost, and when you've heard "Don't Speak" for the 30th time, and you are moving, deliberately and even furiously, toward the MP3 player with a ball-peen hammer -- then, you glance out the window and, yes, there is the hibernal sun peeping out between parting clouds and -- there!-- the glint of its faintly warming light off an icicle, with a small drop of the solid substance in its liquid form assembling at the icy southern end.  'Don't speak,' you think, 'There's nothing to say -- the curse is lifting.'   And, briefly, you are struck by the artistic mastery of the Jonas Bros ... before you come to your senses, put on your boots, and head outside with a shovel.

And, of course, like the storm, there was Jonas (aka Jonah), the reluctant prophet who was loath to preach to the sinners in Nineveh and fled by boat to Tarshish in order to avoid his divine commission.  God was not pleased, and, as a result, Jonas was caught in a storm, pitched overboard, swallowed by a whale. He remained in the belly of the beast for three days. When he came out, thus chastened, he went off to preach to the Ninevites.  The sign of Jonas, as it were, is that of death and rebirth: akin to being buried alive by three feet of snow and, on the third day, digging out into the sunlight and the bright, frozen creation.

The monk, Fr. Thomas Merton -- who hung out in a Trappist monastery south of Louisville, Kentucky in the mid-Twentieth Century -- kept a journal entitled, "The Sign of Jonas."   He wrote, thusly, on Jonas:

Know that there is in each man a deep will, potentially committed to freedom or captivity, ready to consent to life, born consenting to death, turned inside out, swallowed by its own self, prisoner of itself like Jonas in the whale. This is the truth of death which, printed in the heart of every man, leads him to look for the sign of Jonas the prophet. ***

[But,] it is the whale we cherish. Jonas swims abandoned in the heart of the sea. But it is the whale that must die. Jonas is immortal. If we do not remember to distinguish between them, and if we prefer the whale and do not take Jonas out of the ocean, the inevitable will come to pass. The whale and the prophet will soon come around and meet again in their wanderings, and once again the whale will swallow the prophet. Life will be swallowed again in death and its last state will be worse than the first.

We must get Jonas out of the whale and the whale must die at a time when Jonas is in the clear, busy with his orisons, clothed and in his right mind, free, holy and walking on the shore. Such is the meaning of ... the peace that finds us for a moment in clarity, walking by the light of the stars, raised to God's connatural shore, dry-shod in the heavenly country, in a rare moment of intelligence.

But even if we are not always intelligent, we must inevitably die.

I pursue this thought no further. It came to me because [one of the friars] got a lot of kids’ pictures from a sister in a school somewhere in Milwaukee. The pictures were supposed to be by backward children. Backward nothing. Most of them were of Jonas in or near the whale. They are the only real works of art I have seen in ten years, since entering Gethsemani [Monastery]. But it occurred to me that these wise children were drawing pictures of their own lives. They knew what was in their own depths. They were putting it all down on paper before they had a chance to grow up and forget. They were proving better than any apologist that there is something in the very nature of man that expects a Redeemer and resurrection from the dead. The sign of Jonas is written in our being. No wonder that this should be so when all creation is a vestige of the Creator but also contains, written everywhere, in symbols, the economy of our Redemption.

Admittedly, Fr. Merton is not as sublime here as the Jonas Brothers were at their finest -- but, he does, at least, scratch the surface.

And, as for those Brothers Jonas, I suppose the old monk would have told them to take their own advice -- "Don't Speak."  In fact, he might have invited them to join the monastery and embrace the life of complete silence, wherein they might do penance for what Fr. Merton called the "sin of noise."

If this were to transpire, surely, many 'tweeny, tiny hearts would be broken; but, many others would rejoice, rushing out half-dressed into the chilly wasteland and leaping into a colossal snowbank - then lifting up their frosty, joyful faces, perhaps with some word of good news for their Ninevite neighbors, like our ancient brother, Jonas.

The Zen of Pun

Gentle visitors, a friend sent this credo -- one might even say, meditation -- concerning puns.

 

Beyond strange how this captures so perfectly your humble Contributor's deeply-held beliefs and practices concerning the pun.  It is heartening, of course, to know that one has achieved the level of pun sensei (しゃれ先生) - though, to be honest, I already had the sense I was there.

But, the credo's title -- "A Practical Guide..." -- diminishes the theoretical depth of the author's blessed observations.  Truly, it is like dipping one's toe in the tao (道).  

The first observation is the most blessed.  It suggests that a pun might be so bad that it is good.  Here, we move away from the Western, linear notion of bad and good -- that on the one end are horrible, cringe-worthy word plays and, on the other, hilarious, snort-inducing word plays -- and we are drawn instead toward the Eastern notion of the yin yang (陰陽) -- a circle, as it were, where the dark and light meet at one point, such that the worst of puns might, paradoxically, be the best of puns.

For example, a zen herbalist might well opine, concerning a certain variety of Thymus serpyllum that is both satisfying and troubling:  "It was the best of thymes; it was the worst of thymes." 

It is a difficult concept to translate for the Western mind. One might compare it to the card game of Hearts, where the player, through a series of apparently randomly-dealt hands, endeavors to avoid the taint of even one "heart." However, the daring and inventive player may attempt to "shoot the moon" -- akin to wuji (無極) -- that is, to reach for the infinite by taking every "heart" as well as the dread Queen of Spades.  The risk is great; but, the reward is greater.  To take all but one is utter disaster; but, to take all is glorious victory, entering the Hall of the Immortals as a xian (仙/仚/僊;).  Provided, of course, that one is playing with a full deck of cards.

And, yes, the true master must enjoy every pun that emits from his qi (氣) especially when no-one else will -- it is the sound of one man laughing.  Master Hsüeh-T'ou said it well: "When one has understanding, one should laugh; one should not weep."  So, while the multitude groan, the master smiles; what appears to be a curse to the unenlightened is actually an eternal blessing.

It is like the ancient sausage-maker who, having labored for many decades to perfect his craft in perfect mindfulness and patient attention, said: "I gave my best for wurst."