I don’t know if it is God’s great humor or the hubris of Jonah that resulted in my isolation in the belly of my own metaphorical whale, but  sans the fish smell it was no less cramped, dark, and completely uncomfortable.  When it comes to the non-prodigal son and Jonah, I can completely sympathize with their tendency to mope over a last-minute save.  Today, they are my brethren.  Granted, I may be speaking in the voice of that petulant child that roars her ugly head once in a while, but the feeling of putting my ninja on and wreaking havoc on all the vipers and hypocrites and evil doers even has my rational, old soul, adult self jumping on board.  I am tired of bad people getting away with bad things and coming to Jesus to make it all right.  I wish omniscience was one of my super powers so I would have the ability to distinguish between who has really learned the hard lessons and has changed their ways and the liars who just pretend to.  Then I could  spontaneously combust the wolves with my Darth Vader like stare.  But alas, that would make me no better than they are, focused so outwardly on the sins of others that I can’t see my own.  I  did despair a bit at this awareness because Jesus has taught me to keep forgiving the bastards seventy times seventy….which is how I ended up inside my whale.  My internal rantings began to the tune of  “Walking the Line” and all the difficulties that come with that when there are so many who appear to reap benefits from not only walking far away from the line but taunt the rest of us who do…only to descend even deeper to conclude with a chorus of “nana nana booboo” while I visualized the evil doers being herded off a cliff somewhere.  The echo of all that whining bouncing off the blubber of my internal whale became so deafening that I told my internal petulant child that enough was enough already.  The descent into emotional and spiritual retardation, became an invitation to revisit why it is I choose to live by a higher moral imperative anyway.   It isn’t because I believe that I get to go to heaven, or avoid a heavy karmic backlash.  Truly, I believe it is because it makes the most sense to me.  Choosing a path of love demands certain behaviors laid out for me in the New Testament.  Jesus did prescribe a way to live in the world that will build the Kingdom of God and in order to get out of the belly of the whale I had to figure out that holding others accountable is God’s job and not mine.  The phrase, “it’s not fair” is wiped from my lexicon.  That is not to say that I won’t continue to fight for justice, rather, I will trust that Jesus’ great gift is very much alive and well even when it appears that the line isn’t even visible anymore.  I have learned a great lesson these past days and have regain a greater peace.