Swimming to Heaven

October 23, 2017

It wasn’t the same now when they returned to the sea. He’d spoiled everything, ruined them for the world; their nets fallow of fish for three years; their old god Poseidon, now toothless and irrelevant as Santa Claus.

And that character on the shore telling them where to throw their nets. There’s always someone like that. The water had been dead all night. When it sprang to life their eyes were opened and all heaven broke loose. “It’s the Lord!” shouted John. But Peter dove in:

And there below the surface he saw them all: Moses and Elijah riding dolphins; a school of eels sineing and cosineing to the thrums of David’s submarine lyre; and on the bottom June Taylor minnows in Hebrew letters formed salvation and glory and honor and righteousness and peace and holiness and praise to the King!

When Peter at last ascended into the world of men, dripping, he fell at the feet of his fish-frying Lord and wept.

Dive up, little children, dive up! Splash through the sun-filled looking-glass — up, up, into the ever-expanding sky!