The Harpooner’s Calm

In Herman Melville’s Moby Dick there is a violent, turbulent scene in which a whale boat scuds across a frothing ocean in pursuit of the great white whale, Moby Dick. The sailors are laboring fiercely, every muscle is taut, all attention and energy is concentrated on the task. The cosmic conflict between good and evil is joined: the chaotic sea and demonic sea monster versus the morally outraged man, Captain Ahab.

In this boat there is one man who does nothing. He does not hold an oar; he does not perspire; he does not shout. He is languid in the crash and the cursing. This man is the harpooner, quiet and poised, waiting. And then this sentence: “To insure the greatest efficiency in the dart, the harpooners of this world must start to their feet out of idleness, and not from out of toil.”

Melville’s sentence is a text to set alongside the psalmist’s “Be still, and know that I am God” (Ps. 46:10) and alongside Isaiah’s “In returning and rest you shall be saved; / In quietness and confidence shall be your strength” (Isa. 30:15). Anyone who knows the first thing about living intensely in grace knows that there must be quietness and leisure at the center. Christians throughout the centuries have protected and nurtured that center by meditating on Scripture and praying.

Persons who live by faith know that there is something radically wrong with the world. They are also engaged in doing something about it. The stimulus of conscience, the memory of ancient outrage, the challenge of biblical command involve us in the anarchic sea that is the world. The great whale, symbol of evil, and the crippled captain, personification of violated righteousness, are joined in battle. History is a novel of spiritual conflict.

In such a world, noise is inevitable, and immense energy is expended. But if there is no harpooner in the boat, there will be no proper finish to the chase. Or if the harpooner is exhausted, having abandoned his assignment to become an oarsman, he will not be ready and accurate when it is time to throw his javelin.

Somehow it always seems more compelling to assume the work of the oarsman, laboring mightily in a moral cause, throwing our energy into a fray that we know has immortal consequences. And it always seems more dramatic to take on the outrage of a Captain Ahab, obsessed with a vision of vengeance and retaliation, brooding over the ancient injury done by the Enemy. There is, though, other important and creative work to do: someone must throw the dart. The decisive thrust is Spirit directed. Some must be harpooners.

Every Christian is called to this aristocracy of the Spirit. Frequently, the metaphors that Jesus used for the new life of discipleship are images of the single, the small, and the quiet, which have effects far in excess of their appearance. Salt. Leaven. Seed. Jesus chose 12, a minority, to “be with him.” Lines from William Meredith’s poem “Chinese Banyan” are, in this regard, thoroughly biblical:

I speak of the unremarked

Forces that split the heart

And make the pavement toss—

Forces concealed in quiet

People and plants …

Our culture publicizes an opposite emphasis: the big, the multitudinous, the noisy. It is, then, a strategic necessity that Christians deliberately ally themselves with the minority of the quiet, poised harpooners and not leap, frenzied, to the oars. There is far more need that in this hour Christians develop the skills of the harpooner than the muscles of the oarsman. It is far more desirable, and biblical, to learn quietness and attentiveness before God than to be overtaken by what John Oman named the twin perils of “flurry and worry”—for flurry dissipates energy and worry constipates it.

In the midst of the clamor and noise of the day, a line of Scripture can release God’s centering Word; a brief meditation on it can realize and assimilate its creativity; a moment of prayer can recover a graceful poise. The poise of the harpooner is not achieved by leaving the whale boat and lying on a sundrenched tropical beach far from the danger, but precisely by remaining quiet and ready in the midst of the chase.

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.