I am going to go out on a limb and reveal something that just might put me at risk, being a new person here and all.\u00a0 But here goes.<\/p>\n
I love the duck.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
There \u2013 I said it.\u00a0 I love the duck.<\/p>\n
As I write this, a very large yellow duck is docked at the headwaters of the Ohio.\u00a0 It is very large.\u00a0 It is very yellow.\u00a0 And it is one of the most winsome and delightful things I have ever seen.<\/p>\n
I had been following the exploits of the duck and its international adventures since long before I\u00a0 knew it was coming to the \u2018Burgh.\u00a0 The Dutch artist who created the duck, Florentijn Hofman,\u00a0was\u00a0inspired\u00a0by his observation that while the old Dutch masters created beautiful paintings, the art suffered from too much seriousness.\u00a0 What they needed, he thought, was something joyful, something unexpected \u2013 something like a rubber duck.\u00a0 (Just imagine it \u2013 Rembrandt\u2019s self-portrait as an old man\u2026. with a bath toy.)<\/p>\n
Our own city has sure gone nuts for this duck.\u00a0 The launch party saw tens of thousands of folks gathered in downtown to watch it get towed upriver by an Alcosan tugboat to its roost for the evening.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Of course, there are the cynics and the folks who are frustrated by the fact that there is so much suffering and need in the city. Why is our attention captivated by yards of PVC?\u00a0 How could we spend so much money on this? Why not the neighborhoods suffering from gun violence and underfunded schools and hungry children?\u00a0 And I get that.\u00a0 I totally do.\u00a0 I live in the same neighborhood as the Seminary, and I have children in those underfunded schools.\u00a0 But that duck, as ridiculous as it is, brings joy in the middle of its absurdity.\u00a0 And that makes me pay attention.\u00a0 Why?<\/p>\n
A fourth century Greek Christian writer, Evagrius Ponticus,\u00a0showed a groundbreaking awareness of the psychological dimensions of human spirituality.\u00a0 He knew intimately the inner struggles of the human heart and their impact on the life of prayer and ministry, on the effort to give oneself over to God.\u00a0In Evagrius\u2019 writing, there was an eighth deadly sin \u2013 acedia<\/i>.\u00a0 Acedia underscores all the others; it\u2019s \u201cthe one that causes the most serious trouble of all.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 It starts with grumpiness, extends to boredom and meaninglessness, and presumes that things would be better \u2018out there\u2019 or \u2018if only.\u2019<\/p>\n
Writer Kathleen Norris says that \u201c[w]hen life becomes too challenging and engagement with others too demanding, acedia offers a kind of spiritual morphine\u2026.\u201d\u00a0 It leads one, Evagrius writes, to \u201creflect that charity has departed from among the brethren, that there is no one to give encouragement\u2026.\u00a0 This demon drives [one] along to desire other sites where [one] can more easily procure life\u2019s necessities, more readily find work and make a real success \u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n
Why don’t I just pick up my stuff and move somewhere my gifts are recognized.\u00a0 If I can be bothered.\u00a0 \u00a0After all, why wouldn\u2019t<\/i> we want to be in a place where our gifts, genius, etc. are recognized and used toward God\u2019s preferred future?\u00a0 Why wouldn\u2019t<\/i> it make sense to change things to better align with God\u2019s promise?<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s the issue \u2013 each step along the way, the reasoning makes sense.\u00a0 That\u2019s why it is called the \u201cnoonday demon\u201d \u2013 it attacks in the light of day.\u00a0 Whence the sinfulness?\u00a0 It\u2019s in the saturated hopelessness that motivates the desire to change.\u00a0 The antidote is not in changing things out there.\u00a0 There is no technical fix, no completion to the sentence that begins \u201cIf only\u2026\u201d\u00a0 The only redemption, Evagrius tells us, is \u201ca state of deep peace and inexpressible joy\u201d.<\/p>\n
Which brings us back to the duck.\u00a0 I learned a long time ago that this work we do \u2013 ministry, broadly speaking \u2013 is doomed if not funded by joy. I have become convinced that the surprising, frequently absurd, and often playful interventions of the Holy Spirit are absolutely necessary. This oft-forgotten third person of the Trinity derails acedia and its invidious sub-demons.<\/p>\n
But here\u2019s the kicker \u2013 many of the things that become fodder for the despair of acedia are real things, and they really are awful.\u00a0 They need our attention.\u00a0 They need our best energy and the good work of our hands.\u00a0 But if that work isn\u2019t animated by the Spirit and infused with something like joy and hope and a dose of playfulness, it\u2019s not going to be very sustainable.\u00a0 Besides that, we aren\u2019t going to be very nice people to be around.<\/p>\n
In its large yellow way, the duck serves this function \u2013 infusing joy and derailing the status quo gently and absurdly as it navigates the world\u2019s bathtub.\u00a0 It fulfills Hofman\u2019s intent to drive a wedge into cultural acedia.\u00a0 If you haven\u2019t gone to see it yet, take a trip to the Point.\u00a0 And if it\u2019s not the duck that does it for you, I hope it\u2019s something else.<\/p>\n
Me?\u00a0 I plan to see it again.\u00a0 In the meantime, I think I\u2019ll be listening to Luke 3:22 a little differently the next time it comes up in the cycle of readings.\u00a0 I wonder what would have happened in the Jordan River if the Holy Spirit had descended on Jesus like a duck\u2026.?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
By Dr. Helen M. Blier, the new\u00a0Director of Continuing Education at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I am going to go out on a limb and reveal something that just might put me at risk, being a new person here and all.\u00a0 But here goes. I love the duck. There \u2013 I said it.\u00a0 I love the duck. As I write this, a very large yellow duck is docked at…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[31,33,36],"series":[],"class_list":["post-744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-theological-reflection","tag-seminary-community","tag-seminary-experiences","tag-spiritual-journeys"],"yoast_head":"\r\n