On Vocation

Reading Father Mapple’s sermon in Chapter 9 of Moby Dick, one gets the feeling that the pastor’s troubled reflections on accepting the call of his vocation runs deeply in the author Melville’s feeling about writing the truth, no matter what the cost. Let’s pick up his account of the Jonah story where the reluctant prophet is thown from the ship he is fleeing on after a storm threatens to whelm all:

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"And now behold Jonah taken up as an anchor and dropped into the sea; when instantly an oily calmness floats out from the east, and the sea is as Jonah carries down the gale with him, leaving smooth water behind. He goes down in the whirling heart of such a masterless commotion that he scarce heeds the moment when he drops seething into the yawning jaws awaiting him; and the whale shoots-to all his ivory teeth, like so many white bolts, upon his prison. Then Jonah prayed unto the Lord out of the fish's belly. But observe his prayer, and learn a weighty lesson. For sinful as he is, Jonah does not weep and wail for direct deliverance. He feels that his dreadful punishment is just. He leaves all his deliverance to God, contenting himself with this, that spite of all his pains and pangs, he will still look towards His holy temple. And here, shipmates, is true and faithful repentance; not clamorous for pardon, but grateful for punishment. And how pleasing to God was this conduct in Jonah, is shown in the eventual deliverance of him from the sea and the whale. Shipmates, I do not place Jonah before you to be copied for his sin but I do place him before you as a model for repentance. Sin not; but if you do, take heed to repent of it like Jonah."

While he was speaking these words, the howling of the shrieking, slanting storm without seemed to add new power to the preacher, who, when describing Jonah's sea-storm, seemed tossed by a storm himself. His deep chest heaved as with a ground-swell; his tossed arms seemed the warring elements at work; and the thunders that rolled away from off his swarthy brow, and the light leaping from his eye, made all his simple hearers look on him with a quick fear that was strange to them.

There now came a lull in his look, as he silently turned over the leaves of the Book once more; and, at last, standing motionless, with closed eyes, for the moment, seemed communing with God and himself.

But again he leaned over towards the people, and bowing his head lowly, with an aspect of the deepest yet manliest humility, he spake these words:

"Shipmates, God has laid but one hand upon you; both his hands press upon me. I have read ye by what murky light may be mine the lesson that Jonah teaches to all sinners; and therefore to ye, and still more to me, for I am a greater sinner than ye. And now how gladly would I come down from this mast-head and sit on the hatches there where you sit, and listen as you listen, while some one of you reads me that other and more awful lesson which Jonah teaches to me, as a pilot of the living God. How being an anointed pilot-prophet, or speaker of true things and bidden by the Lord to sound those unwelcome truths in the ears of a wicked Nineveh, Jonah, appalled at the hostility he should raise, fled from his mission, and sought to escape his duty and his God by taking ship at Joppa. But God is everywhere; Tarshish he never reached. As we have seen, God came upon him in the whale, and swallowed him down to living gulfs of doom, and with swift slantings tore him along 'into the midst of the seas,' where the eddying depths sucked him ten thousand fathoms down, and 'the weeds were wrapped about his head,' and all the watery world of woe bowled over him. Yet even then beyond the reach of any plummet- 'out of the belly of hell'- when the whale grounded upon the ocean's utmost bones, even then, God heard the engulphed, repenting prophet when he cried. Then God spake unto the fish; and from the shuddering cold and blackness of the sea, the whale came breeching up towards the warm and pleasant sun, and all the delights of air and earth; and 'vomited out Jonah upon the dry land;' when the word of the Lord came a second time; and Jonah, bruised and beaten- his ears, like two sea-shells, still multitudinously murmuring of the ocean- Jonah did the Almighty's bidding. And what was that, shipmates? To preach the Truth to the face of Falsehood! That was it!

"This, shipmates, this is that other lesson; and woe to that pilot of the living God who slights it. Woe to him whom this world charms from Gospel duty! Woe to him who seeks to pour oil upon the waters when God has brewed them into a gale! Woe to him who seeks to please rather than to appal! Woe to him whose good name is more to him than goodness! Woe to him who, in this world, courts not dishonor! Woe to him who would not be true, even though to be false were salvation! Yea, woe to him who as the great Pilot Paul has it, while preaching to others is himself a castaway!

He drooped and fell away from himself for a moment; then lifting his face to them again, showed a deep joy in his eyes, as he cried out with a heavenly enthusiasm,- "But oh! shipmates! on the starboard hand of every woe, there is a sure delight; and higher the top of that delight, than the bottom of the woe is deep. Is not the main-truck higher than the kelson is low? Delight is to him- a far, far upward, and inward delight- who against the proud gods and commodores of this earth, ever stands forth his own inexorable self. Delight is to him whose strong arms yet support him, when the ship of this base treacherous world has gone down beneath him. Delight is to him, who gives no quarter in the truth, and kills, burns, and destroys all sin though he pluck it out from under the robes of Senators and Judges. Delight,- top-gallant delight is to him, who acknowledges no law or lord, but the Lord his God, and is only a patriot to heaven. Delight is to him, whom all the waves of the billows of the seas of the boisterous mob can never shake from this sure Keel of the Ages. And eternal delight and deliciousness will be his, who coming to lay him down, can say with his final breath- O Father!- chiefly known to me by Thy rod- mortal or immortal, here I die. I have striven to be Thine, more than to be this world's, or mine own. Yet this is nothing: I leave eternity to Thee; for what is man that he should live out the lifetime of his God?"

He said no more, but slowly waving a benediction, covered his face with his hands, and so remained kneeling, till all the people had departed, and he was left alone in the place.



“Not clamorous for pardon, but grateful for punishment” -- that is the first task; to be thankful for whale-ribs of one’s penance, to sing hell: Is that then to give one’s joyful assent to the black tasks? Or more simply, does one make of the nails the expiditers of fate? -- my exoriating lust burning like a lantern amid the world’s suffocating indifference? What is conscience but a consciousness that I don’t know any other way to go about this thing?

And the second task -- to speak as the tongue is forged -- “Woe to him who would not be true, even though to be false were salvation!” -- And then to celebrate the gale and the gall of it, to appal rather than please, to make a mordant stink redolent of the rear unguarded cheeks of he who goes under to requite the blue thunder.

Delight in that surrender to that greater will, to know the current is sure and good and leads on to white shores, even if I drown ... no assurances in getting anything in this, other than to gain my soul back, to have sails fuil to the breezes of mighty blue sky ...


THE MARCH OF DAYS

A life sails across its sea
on days of wavelike rollers,
each a rounded sea itself
to breech from trench
to crest. Each day’s a life,
then, an aegis of hours
never as sweet as we dream
nor as dire as we fear,
but complected of both
in the motley of the heart,
a brine-balm sea chantey
which keeps us pulling
hard the oars. I run the
sprinklers now to right
the day’s arrears -- too hot,
too dry, the light of
hard summer withering, a blear --
And love the sound
of dark soak in this first hour
for all it harbors for the
rest as I march through
this next day, for better
and for worse. A poem,
a poop, cat-feedings on
the back porch, feet-
strokings for my wife,
a safe commute, some
sales, some words
of encouragement to
offer in AA; a bit of
booty in the curves
of the world, if only
seen & dreamed -- as
if curvature was enough;
the fragrant garden at
last light, the mewling
need of Violet stretched
out on the living room
floor; the world not shattered,
remiss only so far; my parents
well enough, my wife’s too;
a last kiss before the light
goes out, good sleep, perchance
to sail blue dreams: A day
much like yesterday’s,
like the ten thousand ones
before and whatever score
is left for me upon
tomorrow’s crashing shore.
That’s how life proceeds
when both heaven and hell
compose these gorgeous waves.
My augment, if you will,
my same old same old rave
upon a sea which sings
its own name anyway,
a song for marching days
which will continue on
when I end all singing here,
when my love’s pulse is wan
and the sound of waves is gone.