Delighting and Drawing

My current poem of choice is A Brief for the Defense by Jack Gilbert. I first heard (parts of) it in the episode of On Being where Elizabeth Gilbert was the guest.

I looked up the poem in its entirety, and I cannot resist sharing it here.

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 sodmebody

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 had a wonderful experience of the delight for which I am happy to risk everything on Friday evening.

We have gathered on the first Friday of the month for a game night a few times now. Last night we played a game I hadn’t played before, Telestrations. Sort of like “Whisper Down the Alley” with illustrations, you had to draw a picture in a notebook after choosing a word to illustrate from a card. Then, you passed the notebook and the person to receive it had to guess with words the illustration you drew, alternating drawing and guessing while passing along the notebook until it got back to you. (A bit complicated to explain, super fun to play.)

I noticed that even though I am a highly detailed person, I am not a highly detailed illustrator. My sports car and my tractor looked quite similar. Others though, were rather impressive. Here was a favorite illustration. Can you guess what this player was illustrating?

A delightful evening, indeed!

Let us walk in the holy presence.