Post, the first

Mostly, I am starting this blog because I don’t like the service that was hosting the old one. I was getting spammed with comments and the features weren’t that great. Sometimes the website would load, but it often would not and if it did it took too long. However, this is a consumer culture and if I don’t like something I can just go get a new and better one. This works with vehicles, televisions, churches, and spouses. I guess it works here, too. So, this is where you will find me on the inter-webs from here on out. I will not erase the old blog, so if there is something on there that you particularly enjoyed it will be there until the computers take over the world, Terminator style.

The name of this blog is taken from a set of companion poems written by John Milton called “Il Penseroso” and “L’Allegro,” respectively. ‘Penseroso’ contains hints of our English word ‘pensive’, and means about that, though within the context of the poem, melancholy is a more accurate translation. The closest English word to ‘allegro’ in common usage that I can think of is, unfortunately, the prescription medication Allegra, whose job, fittingly, is to keep the user happy despite seasonal allergies. ‘Allegro’ is best translated as happiness, joy, or, as Milton specifically uses within the poem, mirth.  

Though these are two distinct poems, they serve a complementary role to one another. The first in order is L’Allegro which begins with Milton banishing melancholy from his life and vowing to live a life devoted to mirth (joy). The poem begins at dawn on a picturesque morning and Milton imagines the beauty of a pastoral setting. He speaks also of the joy of a crowded city and the company of men and women, wishes for frequent weddings, and praises the poetry of Ben Jonson and Shakespeare. He ends by telling mirth, “These delights if thou canst give/ Mirth, with thee I mean to live.”

Il Penseroso begins, similarly, by banishing mirth (“vain deluding joys”). Here he invokes the benefits of solitude, sobriety, steadfastness; the poem begins at dusk and pictures a night alone in the dark. He longs for peace and quiet, imagining himself secluded in a lonely tower watching the patterns of the stars and being alone with his books. He wants to be hidden from day and the tedium of real life. In other words, he wishes to sit in the presence of God forever. He ends the poem, once again, “These pleasures melancholy give/ And I with thee will choose to live.”

So, for which of these positions was Milton advocating? Both. He wanted us to be both. The full life is not one filled only with partying and people; if you cannot imagine spending time alone there is something missing in your life. On the other hand if you can only imagine monkish solitude and separation and see no joy in a wedding ceremony or a few drinks with friends there is likewise something amiss.

I have sensed this tension in my own life for some time. Clara says that I am constantly being pulled by my desire to be social and my desire to be alone with books. There have been periods in my life where I have been given over to either mirth or melancholy; periods marked by constantly surrounding myself with people to the detriment of spiritual formation and diligence, as well as periods where I have been so cloistered in a room with books that I forget there are people out there I am to love and be involved with.

And it is easy to get either on the cheap. Milton is not advocating cheap joy or cheap melancholy. Cheap joy is the joy of drinking too much and forgetting your inhibitions, or spending all day watching The Office on Netflix, or any pursuit of joy that functions as a balm against thought. Cheap melancholy is also possible, though infinitely more subtle. I really like sad songs, and this is mostly because they provide this sort of easy thoughtfulness. You can listen to a song about death or breakup or some other lamentable tragedy and you are instantly transported into a world of reflection and that sometime sweet feeling of melancholy and you don’t have to do anything. Four minutes, the proper voice inflection, and guitar strumming and you are there. This is not what Milton was after in pursuing melancholy. He was after genuine love of solitude, genuine desire to sit at God’s feet, genuine wonder at the way the world works and the myriad experiences of our lives. Neither joy nor melancholy comes easily in this scheme. Both are to be worked for, thought about, in order to be attained.

I believe that in every human heart there is a desire for this pursuit, a hope to achieve this balance and live within this tension. A fully human person is one who lives within both other-seeking daytime joy and solitary nighttime thoughtfulness. We don’t envy the life of the constant party animal any more than we envy the life of the medieval monk. In these poems Milton recognizes this. He tells us that joy can go wrong, pleasure can be taken too far and lead to transgression. He also tells us that melancholy left unchecked can lead to despair. We must be warned against both excesses. We were made to live with mirth and melancholy harmoniously, and as we pursue that end we will find ourselves able to achieve great things in the context of a truly satisfied life.

That’s why I named this blog what I have named it; hopefully there will be instances of both mirth and melancholy on this page.