Cheerfully Enough

So let us go on cheerfully enough,
this and every crisping day,

though the sun be swinging east,
and the ponds be cold and black,
and the sweets of the year be doomed.

From “Lines Written in the Days of Growing Darkness” Mary Oliver, A Thousand Mornings

Every new book of poetry by Mary Oliver is an occasion for rejoicing, and an occasion for fresh insight and wisdom to break it. In the poem from her newest book quoted above, Oliver is reflecting on the world as autumn moves into winter. The days shorten. The dark periods lengthen. It inevitably happens every year, and we know that the death of winter will open up again into the new life of spring. The poet advises that we “go on cheerfully enough.”
Human lives are like that too. We experience shadows lengthening and receding in our lives. We get hurt. We hurt others and regret it. Life disappoints us. We disappoint ourselves. Relationships get strained. People we care about get sick; they suffer. People we love die. Psychoanalyst Michael Eigen writes, “One never recovers from being human” (Contact With the Depths).
Yet the channels in the soul opened by feeling these dimensions of our experience might also be channels for deepened joy, for new insights, for feelings of wonder and well-being. Suffering is a part of being human. Growth through our experience of suffering is not so inevitable, but it is possible.
As a Christian, I believe God walks with us in the midst of our suffering, and that God is always influencing us toward growth.
Suffering happens. Growth is possible. Therein lies hope, and a reason for going on cheerfully enough.

With Faith and With Feathers,

David