I Cheerfully Refuse
Journeying • Risking delight • The world flowing with prayer
I offer a few things for you to read today and in the days ahead. I hope you enjoy and find them worthwhile food for thought!
Last spring I was given a gift certificate to a bookstore. One of the two novels I bought was I Cheerfully Refuse by Leif Enger (author of Peace Like a River). I first read it shortly after I bought it and then read it again over the holidays. It's rare I read a novel more than once, particularly not within a span of a few months, but this book had something I wanted to sink into more deeply.
It's the story of a man named Rainy who lives in a small town on the northwestern shore of Lake Superior—the Minnesota side—at a dystopian time not too far in the future. The government has disintegrated along with roads and public services, but folks are making the best of it by running small businesses, playing music, planting gardens, and helping their neighbors.
The inciting incident for this "hero's journey" of a story is when Rainy's wife is suddenly killed and after some months, he appears to be the next target for violence. He escapes on a sailboat inherited from a friend, and only recently refurbished, and sets sail into Lake Superior. If you are unfamiliar with Lake Superior, don't think of it as just a lake. It is the largest freshwater lake in the world. Think of it as a sea. A beautiful sea but one with violent storms. Many hundreds of ships have sunk in its waters.
Rainy, a musician, takes with him his bass guitar and has on board a handful of books, including an unpublished copy of I Cheerfully Refuse, a memoir of the cult author Molly Thorn, a prized possession of his late wife. He sets out for an obscure island he and his wife had sailed to years earlier, but his route is interrupted by storms and illness and sailboat malfunctions. I don't want to tell too much, because I do hope you'll read the book, but I want to tell a little more.
His journey is also interrupted by helping another along the way; by trading what he loved for their safety; by using his gift of music for good when he encountered the danger he had been journeying to avoid. His journey ultimately brought him to a life he had not planned or pursued but that ultimately brought peace and joy.
The memoir belonging to Rainy's wife, I Cheerfully Refuse, kept popping up throughout the story, but it wasn't until about two-thirds of the way through that the connection of the memoir to the narrative of the story became clear. Rainy is reading the book aloud and comes to a section in which one of the book's characters told the young Molly,
"That our job always and forever was to refuse Apocalypse in all its forms and work cheerfully against it.”
In a January 2024 interview with Enger in Poets & Writers, Enger spoke of our duty to refuse "our banquet of anxieties." He went on to say:
"To reject willful ignorance and pursue knowledge; to defy dictators and laugh at theocrats; to embrace curiosity, kindness, coherency, and the hard work of actual stewardship. The title suggests our most effective defiance is the cheerful kind, and that a forward-looking spirit maintains a landing place for the ideas we need most."
When asked what he most wanted people to take away from the book, Enger said that he always writes what he most needs to read at the time:
"In this case, a tale about people finding reasons for hope and even joy in a world where it seems the lights are going out."
The book models going about life during a difficult time personally and corporately while doing good along the way, helping others above yourself, being courageous and also kind. The book models living your life so that as it unfolds you use your gifts to care for yourself but also to give life to and serve others.
"That our job always and forever was to refuse Apocalypse in all its forms and work cheerfully against it.”
I’ve recently made a list of phrases and reminders that have become particularly meaningful to me. I’ve added this list to a mission statement written in the last couple years, and all of it serves to remind me what I want to be about in this world. I’ve added the phrase “I cheerfully refuse.”
There's a poem in the anthology Joy: 100 Poems, edited by Christian Wiman, that I often have thought about after first reading it about 7 years ago: "A Brief to the Defense" by Jack Gilbert.
I want to respect the poem's copyright and not print it out here but do want you to read it, so I've taken a picture of it. I hope you'll click the photo and read the poem. Re-read it even. Come back tomorrow and the day after and the week after and read it yet again.
"Sorrow everywhere" the poem begins. Yet as the poem builds, it gives this encouragement:
"We must risk delight…We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world."
To accept gladness. To risk delight. To laugh even when the future is uncertain. Like many of you, I've been taking life quite seriously as of late, with the dramatic and concerning changes in our government, which means changes in our lives and in the lives of others around the world. Yet I see over and over again, wise leaders, not necessarily of the elected variety, urging us not to forget to allow joy in our lives even though we may be attending to the political sphere with deep concern.
This past week something sent me back to my journal from last summer to look for something and here's what caught my eye as I flipped through the pages. A note I'd written when I stayed a couple days at the guest house associated with St John’s Abbey in Collegeville. I remember the evening. I'd gone into the Abbey Church and sat in the back writing in my journal as the monks were singing through their evening liturgy.
One of the things I’d written down was something I'd thought about before but was grateful to think of again. Given all the monasteries and convents around the world, and all the prayer times of these who are devoted to God, and all the prayers of rabbis and ministers of faith, and all the prayers of persons in pews or at their desk chairs or couches or backyard benches or on their feet as they walk to work, prayer is continually being offered up to God on behalf of the world. At any and every time of day or night, even the middle of the night when you wake up and worry, this is a reassuring thing to remember. Our world is flowing with prayer. What good will yet come?
Thank you for reading! May your day hold hope and delight.
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[Photo: taken of a slice of the book cover art of I Cheerfully Refuse.]
I too recently read this book and appreciated the underlying message of refusing to succumb, though after yesterday's showdown in the Oval Office, I'm finding it harder and harder. But we must. Right things are never easy.
PS. It was such an odd feeling to be reading along and say to myself: "She's going to die! Enger is going to kill this character!" And when he did, I was even more gripped by the direction the author was going to take us even though as he led up to it I kept saying, "No, no, no." Still, I couldn't put the book down.