ST. JOHN:

THE GREAT UNDERNEATH

Quote for the Day - December 27, 2012 - 
Feast: St. John the Evangelist

"There is, one knows not 
what sweet mystery about this sea, 
whose gently awful stirrings 
seem to speak of 
some hidden soul beneath;  
like those fabled undulations 
of the Ephesian sod 
over the buried Evangelist St. John. 

And meet it is, 
that over these sea pastures, 
wide-rolling watery prairies 
and Potters' Fields of all four continents, 
the waves should rise and fall, 
and ebb and flow unceasingly; 
for here, millions 
of mixed shades and shadows, 
drowned dreams, 
somnambulisms, reveries; 
all that we call lives and souls, 
lie dreaming, dreaming, still; 
tossing like slumberers in their beds; 
the ever-rolling waves 
but made so by their restlessness."

Herman Melville [1819-1891], Moby Dick [1851], Chapter 111



Comments:

Read this piece from Moby Dick slowly and go underneath the words. Has anyone else called the ocean a pasture or a prairie or a Potter's field? Read the Gospel of John as looking out at the ocean from the deck of a ship - and think about what's underneath the surface of the words. 

The top picture is of the Atlantic Ocean last September and the middle picture is that of St. John's possible grave in Ephesus from 2011.