I feel a bit guilty as a sit down to write this because I'm noticing that everyone thus far has written on Moore as well. But after a short-lived internal debate, I find I just can't pull myself away from Moore's "What are Years?"
It may have something to do with the fact that I/we am/are at the age where questions such as those posed in this poem are becoming more and more important... so it should also come as no surprise that I'm kind of at a loss for what to do with it.
What is our innocence,
what is our guilt? All are
naked, none is safe...
This is something that's been on my mind for a while, actually - mostly because I've just come to realize how much I dislike the phrase, "No regrets": "I regret nothing; I have no regrets; I don't regret a minute of it!" My automatic response is, "Then who in the world are you?"
I think I know what most people mean, or are trying to mean, when they say things like that - they want to convey that they are who they are, they wouldn't change anything and they're happy with themselves. Terrific - but I would also hope that there's a healthy amount of regret in there.
The dictionary definition of regret is: "to feel sorrow or remorse for (an act, fault, disappointment); to think of with a sense of loss." It strikes me that regret is, more often than not, a feeling of warranted sorrow. It certainly seems that true repentance for the Christian doesn't come about without a certain amount of regret. "You are not what you do," as Jars of Clay puts it, but that lyric also says "Not to undermine the consequence" - we're not defined by our failures and shortcomings, but we're not far from them either.
This is why I question anyone who claims to be innocent along with anyone who claims to have no regrets, just as Moore seems to do - "All are naked, none is safe." There is a disparity here that should not be denied, she says.
It's interesting that, from there, she would say "whence" is courage, rather than ask "what" it is as she did with joy and guilt. "Whence": where does it come from? She doesn't ask for a definition; perhaps it's assumed we know what it is, but if we need to have innocence and guilt explained to us, it's unlikely that we know what courage is. So it's not exactly a "thing", it's more of a force - it's kinetic. Courage is an "unanswered question," standing up even in the face of hopelessness - it's in process, constantly moving.
To what end, though? Moore seems to suggest that courage is its own end, especially in the face of certain defeat. The body of the poem certainly seems to suggest an objective futility ("Imprisonment rises...struggling to be free and unable to be...this is mortality, this is eternity), but also that "Satisfaction is a lowly thing, how pure a thing is joy."
Is the joy, then, in the struggle itself? Does the joy cease if the object of the struggle is attained? Does the search, even the fight, for meaning become meaningless if we find meaning? Satisfaction, she suggests, leads to complacency - it causes us to stop fighting, and it's in the struggle that we find our real joy. As Eliot valued stillness in "Burnt Norton," Moore seems to see perpetual motion as the ultimate source of happiness.
And the harder I look, the more I find myself disagreeing. And the more I disagree, the more I appreciate. Perpetual motion, at this point in my life, is the only thing keeping me sane in many ways. The struggle keeps me alive, there's always something new to accomplish, it's the fight that gives me the momentum to move forward. But Moore seems to suggest that if you stop to consider the meaning of the struggle, then it only serves to wreck your cadence...
But she misses the meaning of fighting, I think: "To contend in any manner; strive vigorously for or against something." The point of fighting is the removal of an obstruction.
The only reason anyone fights is for the chance to rest at the end of it.
"Blessed be the Lord, that has given Rest unto His people, according to all that He promised. There has not failed one word of all His good promise, which He promised." (1 Kings 8:56.)
Moore is right, there is a purpose in struggle and in questioning and even in "the unanswered question" - but as for me, it's that final victory and everything that comes with it, regrets and consequences and graces and all, that I'm looking forward to.
I would disagree with your statement that Moore sees courage as an end in itself. Courage is important not for its own sake but because it "stirs the soul to be strong" and it "encourages others." It is important for us to take courage for the good of our souls and the good of others. I also think that the joy is not in struggling. The joy comes when we create in the midst of death and sorrow. The struggle, the refusal to despair because of death, enables us to experience joy in other things, not just in the struggle itself.
ReplyDeleteI read Moore the same way Kelley did, but I appreciate the different perspective you gave here. I guess now when I go back and read through Moore, especially "Satisfaction is a lowly thing, how pure a thing is joy," I can see how you would come to this conclusion. I think I would still have to go back to the way Kelley says her writing is about how the struggle enables us to experience joy in other things. This type of outlook reminds me a little of C.S. Lewis' perspective in "Surprised by Joy" as he uses many struggles and hard events in his life to show how he experienced joy through them.
ReplyDeleteI like what you said about joy, although I also agree with Kelley and Brynne (so I agree with all three of you all). I think joy becomes a continuous state that is stimulated by suffering. Or, perhaps better put, suffering brings us down to a more base level, where happiness isn't blinding our perspectives and we can find what makes us carry on (and in this case, it would be joy). In my more miserable moments, for example, I've found I become more of a realist. Not only that, but I no longer ignore the problems that I acknowledge but do nothing about. So the power of pain brings me down to my base level, where I occasionally find joy.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if you meant that joy is always in every struggle, but either way, I think it can be a byproduct of turmoil. That said, I think that joy is more or less a mindset (or a spiritual endowment some may say) and that one can find joy in finding the end of pain. In reflection, the troubled are enabled to see that the peace they felt during hardship still carries with them now.
My thoughts anyway :)
I think that joy can also come from knowing the struggle is over or will be over because I do not think that joy is always "in" the midst of suffering. For those of us with hope, Christians who have Christ, then joy might be in suffering but for an average human who has no beliefs where does their joy come from? I think they would not respond well to suffering and there would rarely be joy in their situation because they have no hope.
ReplyDelete1 Peter tells us to "rejoice...as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed."
ReplyDeleteThis suggests that joy is always forward-looking. In the midst of the suffering, joy can be found for what we can hope for that has already been promised. So as Lyle was saying, we carry on in the fight for the victory won in the end. I agree with his saying that Moore looks at joy as "perpetual motion." There has to be anticipation in joy.