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Sometimes, I still do.
The Pain of Resignation
Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce nation, upon surrendering after suffering heavy losses in an unsuccessful and violent 1200-mile retreat from Oregon to Canada, delivered this speech to American General Oliver Howard. It contains one of the most famous lines ever from an American Indian Chief:
Tell General Howard I know his heart. What he told me before, I have in my heart. I am tired of fighting. Our chiefs are killed. Looking Glass is dead. Toohoolhoolzote1 is dead. The old men are all dead. It is the young men who say yes and no. He who led on the young men is dead. It is cold and we have no blankets. The little children are freezing to death. My people, some of them, have run away to the hills and have no blankets, no food; no one knows where they are””perhaps freezing to death. I want to have time to look for my children and see how many I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my chiefs. I am tired; my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever.
I will never know the heartbreak that great warrior knew, I am sure. I have, however, heard his words of despair and defeat echo down the hollow corridors of my soul. “I am tired; my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever.”
Only, I substitute “write” for “fight”.
This is the battle that rages in me. I am driven to write what is hardly read. I have lamented the sparsity of the audience. I have been disconcerted by those who have not and never will read a thing I wrote. My poor wife, the stand-in for General Howard in this case, has heard me wail, “I will write no more forever” so many times, she must be ready to pack me off to a reservation somewhere. Bless her stout, good, and noble heart for bearing the burden of a Melancholic with dignity, grace, and undying belief.
The Echo of a Lonely Voice
I am not the first communicator to lament an inattentive audience. Think of the Hebrew prophet Jeremiah, whom we have dubbed “The Weeping Prophet” because nobody would listen to him and it pained him. One of the two books in the Bible attributed to Jeremiah is called Lamentations! Enough said.
Cursed be the day wherein I was born: let not the day wherein my mother bare me be blessed.
15Cursed be the man who brought tidings to my father, saying, A man child is born unto thee; making him very glad.
16And let that man be as the cities which the LORD overthrew, and repented not: and let him hear the cry in the morning, and the shouting at noontide;
17Because he slew me not from the womb; or that my mother might have been my grave, and her womb to be always great with me.
18Wherefore came I forth out of the womb to see labour and sorrow, that my days should be consumed with shame?
Jeremiah 20:15-18
Not exactly a pick-me-up rah-rah speech there.
The Will to Write On
What I have come to realize is this: my writing is not about you. I do not write for those who do not read. I don’t even write for those who will. I write because I have something to say, not because I have to say something.
Jeremiah should have known, and so should I, and so should you, that the outcome is none of our concern. The input is all we can control.
I do not write for those who do not read. I don’t even write for you, my faithful and loyal reader. Nor do I write for myself. I write because I am a writer and a writer who doesn’t write is not a writer. I write because I can: and if I can, I should, and if I should, I shall.
This may disappoint the General Howards of the world anxious to put me and my kind on a reservation and shut us out and shut us up. I may occasionally deliver an “I quit” speech to my wife but she and I will burn the resignation letter together and I will never quit.
I have been accumulating a collection of ideas for my tombstone inscription. The leader so far?
He died trying.
Hope is Stronger than Despair
Thank you for reading this missive. Now, let us burn it and move on, for there is hope, even in the Lamentations.
Remember my affliction and wandering,
the wormwood and the gall.
20Surely my soul remembers
and is humbled within me.
21Yet I call this to mind,
and therefore I have hope:
22Because of the loving devotionb of the LORD we are not consumed,
for His mercies never fail.
23They are new every morning;
great is Your faithfulness!
24“The LORD is my portion,” says my soul,
“therefore I will hope in Him.”
25The LORD is good to those who wait for Him,
to the soul who seeks Him.
Lamentations 3:19-25