An anchor without a ship ...

Nick Cave recently posted some comments about relationship loss on his amazing site The Red Hand Files. As always, his comments are raw and incisive. In another post he described what led to his ability to be so honest -- because he too got to a point of brokenness and realised there was nothing left to hide and no reason to try to hide. May the tutor of brokenness help us all to learn that lesson.

Anyway, in his recent post, Nick responds to a fan who has asked "If, for decades, an anchor served a ship, which one day decided to cut its chains and sail away, can the drowning anchor grow wings? And if so, will the anchor always be burdened by the weight of having been used?"

Nick notes that "An anchor without a ship is just a useless lump of iron that lies at the bottom of the sea." Maybe you feel like that too -- I certainly did.

I want to echo Nick's wish, for all who have read this blog and find themselves at the bottom of the same ocean ...

My wish for you, my friend — and all the other abandoned anchors that write to me from the ocean floor — is that a time will come when you can reimagine yourself, not as the poor old stalwart anchor rusting on the sea bottom, but as a fucking ship and get back on the surface of the water and do what ships do — venture forth and begin again the strange, dangerous, glorious, storm-tossed voyage of life!

—Nat.

Patience

A sonnet by G. M. Hopkins includes the line "Patience masks our ruins of wrecked past purpose." Patience watches, with bloodshot and tearful eyes, our unfulfilled desires. She protects us from despair but also deceives us with false hope. Patience invites loss and yet persists in obedience.

In the famous passage in 1 Corinthians 13, Paul claims that "Love is patient … always perseveres ... never fails." On the contrary, I have to say that love has failed to sustain my marriage, that patience has simply masked the failure and that further perseverence is useless.

—Nat.

Carrion Comfort

Not, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;
Not untwist – slack they may be – these last strands of man
In me or, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;
Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.

I studied those words of Gerard Manley Hopkins in high school and wonder now what sense I could have made of them then. How, protected from any of life’s arrows, I could have grasped anything of the anguish and triumph in those words.

Will you indulge me in a little paraphrasing …?

To give in to despair is an empty comfort, like feasting on a rotting corpse. I will not accept that option. Even though I am hanging on to whatever it means to be human by no more than an unravelling thread, I WILL NOT let go. I will not say “I can’t go on”. I can go on. I can at least take one more step forward. I can last the night and hope for a better day ahead. I will not give up.

Even though my marriage has ended as roadkill, the fly-blown carcass of my dreams will not define who I am or dictate what I will do next.

The concept of Despair has captured my interest ever since reading the words of Stephen Donaldson, in a commentary on his own “Chronicles of Thomas Covenant” novels – “In reality as in dreams, what matters is the answer we find in our hearts to the test of Despite.” I wish I could write a book that expounds on that brief sentence, but in the end it would be a dry discourse that did no more than point to the astounding insights in the parable Donaldson has already written. In the series of novels, virtually every character faces Despite – despair personified – in their own way, whether it be giving up, maintaining an allegiance to some law or vow, fighting to the death, or sacrificing themselves. I am forced to ask myself how I will deal with Despite.

“Despair”, said someone to me, “is a Western luxury.” Can’t recall if they were African or perhaps South American, but the point was that in their context, there is no option but to struggle, to live, to continue. One cannot collapse in self-pity because it would achieve nothing. In a Xhosa song I wish I had the lyrics for, the guiding theme is that no matter what befalls us, we will walk, we will walk, and we will keep walking.

— Nat