In Terrible Times, Dare to Risk Delight!
I know! I I know the numbers. I know the news. (My news—an extended family member has taken his life.)
Everywhere we listen or look, sadness and helplessness run us down like a freight train without brakes. I know, in the light of it all, that it feels sinful and trivial to post this photo, (this moment of surprise and joy when a boa redid my ‘do.)
But listen: We are not made for this. We cannot carry the burdens and tragedies of the whole world on our small shoulders. Everywhere we turn Newscasters broadcast seeds of despair and destruction: Reporting every jab and stab of one politician to another. Showing the faces and names and losses to everyone of every nation and war. Telling us every rainfall and flood and fire signals the end of the world.
I do not despise truth and I want to be informed and I want to love the world and my neighbors but Listen to me. If we try to carry it all, we will not survive. We will not. We will shrink and wither and die and end up being nowhere present to anyone.
So turn off your media. Or put yourself on a strict ration. Do not worry right now about being “educated” and “informed.” Our very survival, and our ability to love the ones in our own path is at stake. Their lives are at stake too.
But before you turn it all off——read this poem? It confronts the inexplicable polarities of our lives: tragedy beside joy. And it argues, no——it sings——for the reality of joy and how we must fight for it. How we are meant to receive the gladness God has built into every tree and cloud and sparrow and sunrise. Listen to its wisdom:
A Brief for the Defense
by Jack Gilbert
Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that's what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.
**********************************************************************
And I send these photos, where God has shone delight into my corner of the world. I send them hoping maybe you too will “accept your gladness.” That you will dare to risk seeing and naming all that’s good in your corner of God’s world.
Keep watch on that—our truest daily news.
