Enough

What would it take to make you happy? I mean truly happy, so that there would be no more longings, no more yearnings, no more jealousy or discontent? What would it take to alleviate that slow ache that wells up in nearly every human being who's ever lived, that dissatisfaction deep in the recesses of the spirit?

Our implacable hunger for "something else" can be a good thing in its way. Does a contented soul dream or pursue drives or visions?

No, at my time and place in life, it's not the personal successes or failures that make contentment so elusive; it's the responsibilities, the unending worries for those others whose well-being depends on me.

But if there were no responsibilities, I wonder if this would be enough. A cabin in a clearing, a sunny patch where you could plant some corn and squash. A gray light on winter afternoons, filtering through bare branches. A warm fire. Happiness doesn't require a lot of things. All it requires is an absence of worry.

Of course, if this cabin were my world, I'd worry about deer getting into the corn. I'd worry about running out of firewood. My worries would be pretty much ingrown. Hell, I survived the school bus and elementary school. They will, too.

Motherland

Where in hell can you go

far from the things that you know

far from the sprawl of concrete

that keeps crawling its way

about 1,000 miles a day?

O, Motherland, cradle me;

close my eyes;

lullaby me to sleep.

Keep me safe;

lie with me;

stay beside me.

Don't go. Don't you go.

O, my five and dime queen,

tell me, what have you seen?

The lust and the avarice,

the bottomless, the cavernous greed?

Is that what you see?

O, Motherland, cradle me;

close my eyes;

lullaby me to sleep.

Keep me safe;

lie with me;

stay beside me.

Don't go. Don't you go.

It's your happiness I want most of all,

and for that I'd do anything at all.

O, mercy me!

Now come on shotgun bride.

What makes me envy your life?

Faceless, nameless, innocent, blameless

and free.

What's that like to be?

O, Motherland, cradle me;

close my eyes;

lullaby me to sleep.

Keep me safe;

lie with me;

stay beside me.

Don't go. Don't you go.

"Motherland," by Natalie Merchant

Contentment

Every grownup knows that there comes a time in your life when you just have to settle for what's offered and make the best of it. It's not exactly that you bury the idealism of your youth, that drive to make a difference in the life of the world, that deep desire to be different from all the others who clog up the system with their unimaginative lives, and their whining, and their selfish exploits. It's not exactly that you give in. But you reach the realization that there's very little else to be and do. And you're not as exceptional as you used to think you were.

That's when the time is upon you to buy a riding mower and spend your free time circling your grassy lawn on it, thinking about crabgrass, and dandelions, and all the myriad other threats to your dreamy idyll. It's not that you ever say to yourself, "Okay, I officially declare that I am part of this world's problems now and no longer in search of solutions." That never happens. But the Bilco door needs painted. The shutters need scraped and repainted, too. The gutter needs cleaned out--again. And the more successful you become, the smaller your world, the more insular.

It's not that you stop caring. It's just that imaginary problems begin to obscure the real ones. And the real threats to a happy life--things like jealousy, and bitterness, and nursing old wounds, and comparing yourself to other people--they go unchecked, while all the supposed threats are hunted down like Osama bin Laden.

As I meditate on the life of the world, I'm beginning to believe that the date is late, time is fearsomely short, and the only work that truly matters now is the most urgent work of restoring the planet for future generations. My particular issue is opposition to Marcellus shale drilling, and I have decided to don my clerical collar and show up at all the protests, to write articles, to publish treatises, to enlist the faith communities to find their voice. There are a thousand ways to throw one's life back into the fray...but that is where Life calls us, to the fray. The way of contentment always entails a cause, a purpose bigger than oneself, a deep sacrifice. In some circles they call it a cross, but it's not limited to any religious tradition. It's a universal truth: new life only comes from death.