In American writer Wendell Berry’s novel “Hannah Coulter,” the titular character reflects as she grows older on her upbringing and her adult life. She also thinks often about her adult children, who have all moved away from their home and their widowed mother.
In one significant section of reflection on the past and its failures, Hannah instructs herself with the following:
You can make complaints about what people, including you, make of their lives after they have got them, and about what people make of other people’s lives, even about your children being gone, but you mustn’t wish for another life. You mustn’t wish to be somebody else. What you must do is this: ‘Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In every thing give thanks.’ I am not all the way capable of so much, but those are the right instructions.
Hannah’s encouragement to herself in the midst of her longing and wondering is taken from Scripture – the words in quotations that she refers to as the “right instructions” are from 1 Thessalonians 5. As she considers what might have been, she recognizes the kernel from which the “right instructions” have sprouted: contentment.
Through Hannah, Berry reminds his readers that it is not our place to wish for what is not ours but to be content with what we have been given. It is the contentment of not “wish[ing] for another life” that allows one to rejoice and pray without ceasing.
As I have read the Bible throughout my life, I have always been challenged by those “right instructions” from 1 Thessalonians. They seem, from the surface, rather unreasonable: How is one to rejoice forever? How could it be possible to pray all the time?
Hannah’s reflection upon these instructions helps me understand them better. We may not be capable of praying all the time, but we ought to cultivate an attitude of prayerful, joyous contentment and gratitude in everything. The dissatisfaction inherent in wishing to be somebody else or to live another life is opposed to the thankful, humble posture of Paul’s instructions to the Thessalonians. Those who wish for another life – whether or not they realize it – are living in rejection of the fact that all of life ought to be filled with prayer and joy.
G. K. Chesterton reflects upon similar instructions when he writes:
You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.
“Pray without ceasing” means that, among other things, we ought to pray in and through all variety of things. It is easy to pray and be grateful in moments that have been appointed specifically for those things, such as Sunday morning worship or grace before meals. But grateful prayer is much less natural in the ordinary business and enjoyments of life, whether writing or working or walking or attending the opera. It is even more unnatural in the challenges of life, when we, like Hannah Coulter, are tempted to wish for another life.
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The republication of this article is made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal.
Image Credit: Picryl
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