Tag Archives: happiness

To live a storyless life.

poetry, time, writing, , , , , ,

“3100 Christians were killed and 2830 were kidnapped in Nigeria in 2024.” In India, “Four to five pastors or churches are attacked every day.” These are some statistics representing great suffering in parts of the world that aren’t in our daily headlines. The constant wars and episodes of violence, the dysfunctional families and societal breakdown that do make the headlines can’t begin to tell the story of each individual human life wracked with pain and heartache. No doubt all of us know, and many of us are, cases in point. Is it not crass, under the circumstances, to write about being happy? Should we feel guilty for even being happy?

The words of Jesus about tribulation had been floating around in my mind a lot recently: “In the world you will have tribulation,” and, “I have overcome the world.” Last Sunday as I was driving to church and actually bringing those thoughts into focus, as hard as I tried I could not remember the clause that comes between those two, which I have known most of my life. I stopped on the way to pick up a friend, and while I was waiting for her to come out to the car I looked up the verse on my phone. It turned out to be a convenient case of forgetfulness because when I went to the Bible app, of course it had several translations, which gave a broader meaning to Christ’s encouraging words.

Our Lord had just been telling his disciples about many disturbing things that would happen in the future, and then generalized saying, “In the world you will have tribulation….” And his next words are startling, really. The way I knew the next part is: “…but be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world.” Other translations are “take heart,” or “have courage, for I have overcome the world.”

The poem below is about being happy, about meaning, and writing. I’ve written before about how in the most creative, happy times of my life, which were while I was with child, I completely forgot about my diary or journal and never wrote a word in it. At other times, just living at a normal level of happiness, I often have written in a journal. My problem with journaling is exactly what G.K. Chesterton alluded to on at least two occasions saying,

“I am a bad reporter because everything seems to me worth reporting; and a bad reviewer because every sentence in every book suggests a separate essay,” and,

“Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.”   

Did Chesterton ever keep a journal, I wonder? My guess is he didn’t, because writing about everything in a journal would leave him no time for gainful employment at writing in a more focused manner about many things.

William Henry Hunt, Girl Writing by Lamplight

I seem to have given up on my journal to a greater degree than ever before, because there is just too much that I want to put in it. If I wrote in my journal the way I want to, I would never be done. I sense this, every time I try, and I start scribbling madly, racing against time, knowing that it’s hopeless: I will never be able to do a proper job. Journaling demands to be neverending.

A book I borrowed briefly from the library some years ago told the story of the author’s obsession with journaling, and then her obsession with thinking about her obsession. She asked, How could she have a life, if she journaled about everything? She feared she was ceasing to really live, because she was writing instead. I didn’t read very far in it, because if journaling was stealing time from living, using my precious hours to read her book was even worse theft.

Blogging is not the same at all, in my case. I have to be somewhat focused when I write for others to read, and I must bring every post to an end, so I can publish it. For a process-oriented person like me, each post is a manageable goal, one which I can abandon and no one will care. In the meantime, I’m able to include some of the things I would have journaled about, without getting lost in my thoroughness.

I could put myself into this poem, and I would be talking to God. Because I do write a lot, the whole thing may not seem to pertain to my situation. But it did make me think, and it made me happy.

MISSED TIME

My notebook has remained blank for months
thanks to the light you shower
around me. I have no use
for my pen, which lies
languorously without grief.

Nothing is better than to live
a storyless life that needs
no writing for meaning —
when I am gone, let others say
they lost a happy man,
though no one can tell how happy I was.

-Ha Jin

Louise Bourgeois, Woman and Clock

 

As Dr. Johnson said.

homemaking, quotes, work, , ,

In looking for the source of a C.S. Lewis quote recently, I came upon the website of William O’Flaherty, who has written a whole book about misquotes of Lewis. Many of these result from the mis-quoter having reduced a passage to a summary, taking bits of sentences and combining them into something that is a mere shadow of the original, or maybe even a shadow shading the sun of the original.

One thing Lewis wrote that I have long appreciated is the following passage, which in its emaciated form has made the rounds of the online world now. It’s so much better in the full version, in which Lewis quotes Samuel Johnson, and we thereby get extra support for his argument. Here is the excerpt, from “a letter to Mrs. Johnson”:

“I think I can understand that feeling about a housewife’s work being like that of Sisyphus (who was the stone rolling gentleman). But it is surely, in reality, the most important work in the world. What do ships, railways, mines, cars, government etc exist for except that people may be fed, warmed, and safe in their own homes?

As Dr Johnson said, ‘To be happy at home is the end of all human endeavour’. (1st to be happy, to prepare for being happy in our own real Home hereafter: 2nd, in the meantime, to be happy in our houses.) We wage war in order to have peace, we work in order to have leisure, we produce food in order to eat it. So your job is the one for which all others exist.”

-C.S. Lewis

He drops by a silken thread.

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More than one reviewer of Richard Wilbur’s late collection of poems noticed that after his wife died, the poet wrote more about death, as in this example below. That would be a natural response, of course, for someone 90 years old, even if he hadn’t been recently widowed.

I know it’s recommended that people of all ages live with awareness of the shortness of our lives, as in Psalm 90: “Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” Or as another translation goes, “Teach us to realize the brevity of life….”

If our dearest friends and family have departed, it could exacerbate any feeling of weariness we already had with this earthly existence. In the same Psalm the poet mentions the less-than-thrilling aspects of life: “The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.”

A MEASURING WORM

This yellow striped green
Caterpillar, climbing up
The steep window screen,

Constantly (for lack
Of a full set of legs) keeps
Humping up his back.

It’s as if he sent
By a sort of semaphore
Dark omegas meant

To warn of Last Things.
Although he doesn’t know it,
He will soon have wings,

And I, too, don’t know
Toward what undreamt condition
Inch by inch I go.

~ Richard Wilbur

Richard Wilbur was a lot smarter than an inchworm, so I like to think he had this verse from I Corinthians in mind when he wrote those last lines: “But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.”

Because the Preparer is Love, our Last Things, though unimaginable, will be the best.

I first shared this poem of Wilbur’s ten years ago, before he had passed over, into what we might think of as the pupa stage; today I read this about the inchworm:

“After the larva hatches, he feeds on leaves for about a month before he drops to the ground via a silken thread. In late spring or early summer, the larva burrows up to 4 inches into the ground, spins his cocoon and pupates. If he’s a fall worm, he’ll emerge in the fall, usually between November and early December. If he’s a spring worm, he’ll wait until the next late winter to emerge.”

At the time of Wilbur’s death I posted one article written about him for the occasion, but just now I found another tribute in USA Today, in which the journalist remarks on the unusual quality of happiness in this poet, and quotes Wilbur:

“I think many people associate happiness with shallowness,” Wilbur told the AP. “What people don’t want is someone who is complacent. And I know that I am not a complacent man.”

Richard Wilbur was the farthest from complacent that I can imagine. He spent his life being attentive to the world around him and pursuing love and beauty. I hope that in his present state he knows even more what C.S. Lewis meant when he said:

“Joy is the serious business of Heaven.”

Geometer inchworm moth – Scopula Decorata or Middle Lace Borer