In the Belly

Pastor’s Epistle—March 2021

We’re coming up on what I think we can all agree is a major milestone. St Patrick’s Day marks one year since everything shut down: schools, parishes, businesses. It was our first covid lockdown, a fortnight to Holy Week. I could not have imagined what all was to come, from the early silliness of toilet paper shortages and Tiger King marathons to the more pervasive shifts of distance learning and mandatory masking.

At the time, honestly, I was worried about the fate of our parish should we go two weeks without worship, especially if we couldn’t gather for Easter. What would that mean for St Peter’s, spiritually, financially, communally? Yet here we are, a year later, in a very different sort of Lent, posting half a dozen online videos per week, learning how to be the Body of Christ together when we still cannot gather as we once were wont to do.

It can be a strange thing, all this ministering through cyberspace. Some days I’m amazed at just how wide a net we can cast with little more than a smartphone and a laptop. At times we hear from people in Alaska, or Sweden, who appreciate all that St Peter’s is doing out here in the Minnesota wilds. But other days I catch myself wondering whether anyone is listening at all, or if I’m simply preaching out into the void.

All of which has left me wondering what indeed I ought to write about this month. Should I look ahead to Holy Week at the end of March? Should I have a little fun with St Paddy’s, as I tend to do? Or should I focus on this anniversary, a year of St Peter’s in Covidtide? None of those held much appeal.

But then out of the blue a daughter of the congregation and an old confirmand of ours sent me a poem she had penned, and it just sort of put everything into perspective. I asked her permission to share it, which she graciously gave, so here it is. I believe you’ll find it quite as lovely as I have. And I also think you’ll find that it speaks a blessed word of peace amidst sharp white teeth.


In the Belly of the Whale
by Leah Roberts

there is a boy.

He lays on his back
on the beast’s wet tongue
of the beast’s wet mouth
in the beast’s wet sea.

The boy prays, says:
Lord I have been banished
from your sight; yet I will look
again to your holy temple.

The boy waits in the dark
for three days and three nights,
and when he gets bored of freaking out,
the boy crawls around.

He slaps his hands against
the fish’s flesh, tickles
the back its throat with his fingers,
rests beside its sharp white teeth
and laughs—for even here,

even here—he is alive,
and he is safe.