Fish on Friday
By Leonard Wibberley
First Published August 1979
10/21/2015
Once I was sailing to Hawaii and about 800 miles off the islands I had a heart attack.
It came at a most inconvenient time, for 1 was at the wheel, it was 3 in the morning, the tradewind was blowing at perhaps 20 knots and, with a heavy quartering sea, my 32-foot sloop was hard to control.
The heart attack was unmistakable—dull leaden pains across my back, going down my arms and terminating in the center of the palm, together with a brassy taste in my mouth as if I had been sucking on a doorknob, which I used to do often when I was a child.
I was highly annoyed. I had four teenagers sleeping below as crew, two of them my sons. And, although they were all good sailors, none of them could navigate. If then I died, they would not only have the horrible problem of what to do with my remains but the equally horrible problem of preserving themselves by getting the boat to Hawaii.
I therefore prayed a very powerful prayer. Formulated prayers are fine and I haven't a word against them on normal occasions. But this called for something special, so I addressed the Lord in approximately the following terms:
“Look here. This is not the act of a gentleman. You have done many things with which I disagree but I am prepared to cede that you have your point of view as I have mine. But I have always respected You as being gentlemanly and You are stepping completely out of character and thus being untrue to Yourself by sending me this heart attack at this particular time. Therefore, please take it away until I have brought this yacht safely into harbor when You may send it whenever you please.”
The heart attack was gone within a moment and did not return until I was safely back in California and had a much better chance of coping with it.
I tell this story because praying is not always, as some of us were taught in childhood, the uplifting of the mind and heart to God, but sometimes a matter of having something out with Him, making it quite clear that we just do not agree with what He is doing.
That is to my mind true faith, which is, of course, the basis of prayer, for there is no sense praying at all if you don't believe.
I remember once reading a story of a boy who went daily to a particular church and prayed to a particular saint to intercede with the Almighty and get him a horse for his birthday. His birthday arrived, and there was no horse for a present. He burned down the church.
This was, of course, an outrageous reaction and certainly not to be recommended. But it demonstrates to my mind a degree of faith in which most of us are often lacking. The boy would not have burned the church down if he didn't believe that the saint could have gotten him his horse.
The direct approach, man to man, as it were, seems to me to work the best. And sometimes this plain and sensible communication comes from the other direction.
There was a time, for instance, when I was sailing one evening to Catalina from King Harbor, Redondo Beach. It was wintertime and being once again at the wheel, I was freezing cold and grew increasingly hungry. As the hours went by and, my appetite grew, I remarked to my wife that as soon as we had reached the island, I intended to have an enormous steak for my dinner.
“You can't,” she said. “It's Friday.” That was in the days when members of my faith were compelled to eat fish on Fridays.
“Nonsense,” I replied. “If the Lord truly intended that a man as cold and as hungry as I should eat fish for his dinner after so miserable a passage, he would send us one now. For in the sea around us at this very moment, there are shoals of fish and it would be no great feat to present us with one.”
A little later there was a rattling up forward and I sent my son, Kevin, along the deck to belay whatever line had come loose from its cleat. He returned holding a fine flying fish wriggling in his hand. We threw it back into the sea for one is not entitled to eat the messengers of God — and had tuna sandwiches for dinner.
There have been situations of anguish in my life and in yours too, I am sure, in which desperate prayers have not been answered. I am no Pollyanna on the subject. But I have found them answered often enough to believe that the greatest source of energy we have is prayer — plainly said.
Leonard wrote a series of murder mysteries about a priest-turned-amateur detective who both solves crimes and saves souls under the pen name Leonard Holton.
The Saint Maker — the first book in the series — is available on Kindle.
Named “A Red Badge Novel of Suspense” alongside Agatha Christie, Michael Innes, and Hugh Pentecost, The Father Bredder Mysteries, inspired a television show starring George Kennedy.
When Father Bredder gets involved with murder—Heaven only knows what will happen next...
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The Mouse That Roared books are available here.
