"we have come to our real work"

This weekend, I’m thinking about perseverance.

Not hope. Not confidence. Not even stoicism. Something more like faith—faith under duress, against the grain, in spite of the cold whimsy of the gods.

Unless you are a very lucky person in life, you will find that you need to develop the virtue of perseverance.

But are you really lucky if you lead such a life?

What kind of people would we be without adversity?

For most of human history, suffering was simply considered to be a part of the human condition. Today, it seems to be more of a problem to be solved. That attitude strikes me as an error.

Don’t get me wrong—not suffering is a lot better than the alternative. Anesthesia, anti-depressants, laws against domestic violence—so many modern advancements make life better, liberating countless millions of people from the shackles of agony.

But it seems to me that the admirable proposition, “You should not have to endure everything,” can too easily slip in our time into the therapeutic, “Experiencing distress of any kind is evidence that something must be wrong.” And because of that transformation—that suffering is somehow unnatural or even immoral—the shadow of embarrassment or shame can attach itself to people who suffer.

This is wrong. It’s why the virtue of perseverance is so essential, for us all. We learn from those who do not merely endure, but are transformed by the struggles they face. We become closer to each other and closer to our shared humanity in all its dimensions through their perseverance. They teach us.

That’s what Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the great Russian dissident and writer of the Soviet era, declares at the end of The Gulag Archipelago, his epic account of the tyranny.

“Bless you prison! Bless you for being in my life,” he writes. “For there, lying upon the rotting prison straw, I came to realize that the object of life is not prosperity as we are made to believe, but the growth of the human soul.”

That is an astonishing thing to say.

The Soviet state arrested Solzhenitsyn, stripped him of his status, sent him through prisons and camps and attempted to crush him. He persevered.

And somehow, afterwards, he summoned gratitude for what he received through the ordeal: His own profound capacity to discover truths about himself, about good and evil, the falseness of ideology, the true nature of courage, and the human soul. A comfortable life would have concealed all that from him. He would not have been Solzhenitsyn.

OK—nobody wants to go live in the Gulag. Or get cancer. Or go through divorce. Or any of the other travails this life might bring us.

And very few of us are Solzhenitsyns.

Think for a moment of George Bailey, the fictional character from the classic Christmas movie, It’s a Wonderful Life.

The entire story of that film revolves around all the things that George’s ordinary, small-town, domestic, limited life has cost him. From the trip he never took, to the college he never attended, from the money he never made to the old, drafty house he feels trapped in—George Bailey is a frustrated man.

But he perseveres magnificently through it all, until at last, faced with financial ruin, he despairs, and attempts suicide. He is broken.

And then, the Christmas miracle: his unlikely guardian angel Clarence shows him a world in which George Bailey never existed. He returns home—and nothing has really changed. He's still facing financial disaster. The nasty Potter still has the money. The house is still drafty. The banister is still broken.

But George comes home, and what does he do? He kisses that broken newel-post. (Always brings a tear to my eye—and probably yours, too.)

George’s perseverance is rewarded in that instant not by money—that comes later, when the townspeople he has served so long and so well rescue him—but with gratitude. He loves his wonderful life.

So let us have a couple of poems about perseverance. And may we all continue to grow in it.

—Terry

The first today is by Ellen Bass, the American poet and author of the hugely influential (and controversial, in some quarters) non-fiction work, The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse.

by Ellen Bass

to love life, to love it even

when you have no stomach for it

and everything you’ve held dear

crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,

your throat filled with the silt of it.

When grief sits with you, its tropical heat

thickening the air, heavy as water

more fit for gills than lungs;

when grief weights you down like your own flesh

only more of it, an obesity of grief,

you think, How can a body withstand this?

Then you hold life like a face

between your palms, a plain face,

no charming smile, no violet eyes,

and you say, yes, I will take you

I will love you, again.

And finally, a great poem by the great American poet and naturalist Wendell Berry.

by Wendell Berry

It may be that when we no longer know what to do

we have come to our real work,

and when we no longer know which way to go

we have come to our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.

The impeded stream is the one that sings.