When the call went out for writers for this season of Inward/Outward, I was more focused on my very busy schedule than on the assigned Gospel readings for each week. Picking a week when I thought that I would have time and energy to write, I hadn’t even looked at the text until early this morning. Now, a few hours later, my heart is sinking. So much has been written about Jesus telling those Galilean fishermen where to throw their nets* that I am completely out of fresh ideas. As I stare at the empty page before me, I feel as hopeless as Simon, James, and John did before Jesus got into their boat. What new insight can anyone—least of all me—possibly draw out of this over-fished text?
This feeling of despair, of emptiness, is a familiar companion in a seemingly endless, omicron-plagued winter. The promise of travel to be with distant family at Christmastime became another one that got away, leaving me—like so many others—with yearning arms and aching heart. As the too-brief glory of new-fallen snow faded into uninspiring days of wet, gray skies hovering over piles of melting slush, I stayed inside, unwilling to risk a slip on icy sidewalks. Even the bright sunshine that tempted me to venture outdoors earlier today betrayed me, disguising the bitter cold that turned my fingers numb within minutes.
The poet Jack Gilbert point to a way out of this hopeless net of knots. The beauty of dawn, the miraculous symmetry of the Bengal tiger, and the sound of laughter, he says, are evidence that God wants us to enjoy ourselves, even in a world filled with sorrow, slaughter, and suffering. In his impassioned poem “A Brief for the Defense,” Gilbert says,
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.
[Gilbert, Collected Poems, p. 213]
Delight, Gilbert suggests, is the way out of despair. Similarly, in her little book of meditations on the artist’s life, the painter Audrey Flack once wrote:
Art can be: joyous, exciting, life-enhancing, fun-packed, insight-provoking,
exalting. Art can be: terrifying, frenetic, devastating, deadening,
life-draining, mean-spirited, illusion-shattering. When art is mostly
all of the first category, it means the go-ahead signal is on.
When art is mainly of the second category, it’s time to go dancing.
[Flack, Art and Soul, p. 61]
I used to keep a copy of this observation on the bulletin board in my studio, to remind myself that sometimes it’s not helpful to keep doing what has worked in the past. Whether it is art-making, reflecting on scripture, or even prayer, when what I am doing is filled with pain, it’s time to try something entirely different, to reach for delight. When that miraculous catch keeps swimming out of reach, I think that Jesus is telling me to not just look in a new direction, but to get out of the boat and see what else there is to catch besides fish. Or maybe just go dancing.
–Deborah Sokolove, Seekers Church
Questions
- What inspires you when you are out of ideas?
- When have you been called to look for delight?
- How do you know when it is time to go dancing?
