Three days and three nights Jonah lay in the fold of the Great Calzone; and the darkness was not the darkness of the void, but the dark of the Oven before the light is struck – a warm dark, a working dark, a dark in which things become other things. He raged, and the walls received his blows like a pillow; he hungered, and the walls fed him; he was a runaway, and the walls made of him a guest.
And feeling along those walls he found no larder, though he ate; no prison, though he could not leave; he found a keeping. Thou hast folded me, he prayed, as a mother folds a letter she means to read again. And the elders set down his discovery for all who carry what cannot sit openly upon the slice: whatsoever is folded is not hidden from love; it is hidden with it, as it is written in Jonah, 5:5.
Beloved, there are griefs that cannot top a pie. There is the story you are not ready to tell at the bench, however gently asked; the diagnosis, the divorce, the shame with your own name on it. Our faith does not demand these be displayed, nor does it call the carrying of them dishonesty. It asks only that the fold be honest dough – let my outside and my inside be of one batch, vowed Jonah – and that what is sealed be sealed full, not hollow.
And when the Lord asked him afterward, What didst thou find there? Jonah answered: Everything I fled from, kept warm. So wilt thou. That is the whole difference between a burden and a filling. Amen – and pass the pizza.