“You are made of Oceans,
You will grow in waves”
~ Jinan Safko
Ancient Greeks began their tragedies in the middle, because despair is disorienting. In Media Res, they call it. And so to sing of Job and all his woes is to begin where the divine voice speaks: “Who darkens my counsel with ignorant words?” The Holy One cries; “Where were you, when I laid the foundations of the earth?..When I determined the boundaries of the oceans: thus far you shall come, and no farther.” The Almighty reminisced, as Job breathed. Job is made of oceans; his breathing in and out, the tide of existence. Job sits alone in silence, like the bottom layer of a Rothko painting. Utter silence containing pain and ignorance, desire and disdain, and for what? The question that has haunted Job’s search for meaning and resilience.
Job was once breathing easy. His labored sighs now weighed down with mourning, and the realization that his breath is all he has left. In and out, like a steady chop of water against sand. “Blameless,” thinks Job. “And upright.” The refrain of what brought this upon Job, his aspiration and accolade. Job was a man who paid attention to details in a sacred way. He always made arrangements and ensured the prosperity of his people. As a prophet, He upheld the righteousness of the Most High and as a priest, to his family, he walked the path of the divine messenger. Intercession and reconciliation and community organization were the pillars of Job’s temple.
But the Most High and the Adversary made a wager, you may have heard about it. “Take away the prosperity,” claimed the Adversary, “and the righteous person will despise the Most High.” And so Job fell from grace, his prosperity torn apart in an unthinkable and unforgettable moment when three messengers arrived. Like three lightning bolts to Job’s gut.
The barbarians have struck our tribe.
The fires have burned us up.
Even the invisible wind has laid us to waste.
Job’s estate and family were no more.
In grief, Job laid down his head and upheld his integrity with the name of the Most High. The resilience of unknowing through tears of inconsolable sorrow. Though he refused to budge, his body itself gave way. Job’s grief was poured out through the festering sores on his body, and through the abandonment of his partner, and he was found by his last remaining friends, alone, and silent.
It is anguish that Job expressed when he spoke forth the now famous curse. “Cursed is the day of my birth!” That seemed the only solution Job could now imagine. Amidst the unrelenting why of cosmic frustration, Job asked “what does it mean to be blameless and upright?” If there is no defense or relief against the onslaught of suffering. Perhaps it is simply to breathe, into resiliency in the mind and heart, and oceans full of outer chaos and inner turmoil where only breath can lead the way.
The longsuffering of Job does not need to teach us about God, or Satan, or Theodicy. Job’s experience is what it means to “go on”.
To draw in a breath full of salty tears and blood stained dust.
To go blind or mad with rage of pure being in a cosmic void.
To hold one’s breath for it is all that one has left.
Job was reminded that we are sand and breath in an infinite ocean, in which doing and being matter, against unassailable logic and pain. Job’s breath is the vapor of death; life fading in or out in a moment. It is the breath of those three messengers, the breath of all curses, and the breath of pure silence; the breath that every person draws as their next, though they suffer without yet knowing justice.
Job learned that it is despair that disorients us, and we start in the middle in hopes of ending back at something like the beginning. A great warrior said “for us, there is no spring; just the wind that smells fresh before the storm.” And like seeds watered in a deluge, we quickly run out of room and comfort and the known, and must grow toward soaring winds in the eternal sky above.
