Risking delight

Sitting up in bed, sipping coffee next to the open window not quite listening to BBC4's continuing coverage of the Queen's last exit (Anglophilia and demos being challenged bedfellows on such occasions), as the dogs still snooze ... My daily delight (minus the funeral), lately.

It's been my main message these many years, writing and teaching, that (as Margaret Renkl quotes Jack Gilbert) we must "risk delight" while we have the opportunity. The seasonal transition to autumn, astronomical and meteorological, is such an opportunity. “Be joyful though you have considered all the facts,” as The Mad Farmer says. Sorrow is ubiquitous, but oh the goldenrods and aster.

It happens this week, though the mercury is forecast to rise into the 90s once again in middle Tennessee after the recent respite of cool weather. It's been lovely to fling open the windows at dawn, and then pull on a light jacket and step into the cool for our morning Dogwalks. Interpreted loosely, Spinozistically, that's where we look for godly delight. Dog is my co-pilot. (Note to self: check out Alexandra Horowitz's latest...)

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.

 I'm going to look for more Jack Gilbert...