Enjoyment
In Marilynne Robinson’s Jack the eponymous hero, persuaded of his dissoluteness, ever expecting the worst, is told by a preacher: ‘Mr Ames, if the Lord thinks you need punishing, you can trust Him to see to it. He knows where to find you. If He’s showing you a little grace in the meantime, He probably won’t mind if you enjoy it.’ I thought of this while watching a decent documentary about Mahalia Jackson. Thomas Dorsey said: ‘The key to Mahalia was very simple: she enjoyed her religion.’ Having grown up with Jackson’s voice (my mother had LPs), still feeling immensely comforted by it, I wonder if this is not what I’ve always sensed, somehow, without articulating it. Mahalia, a key player in the civil rights movement, had known hardship; she had few illusions about life; yet the visceral vocal power of this woman, who ‘took the beat from the nightclubs back to the church’ is charged with joyful zest. Coming to think of it, most of us could probably risk enjoying our religion a little more.
