The Fisher-King

In certain ancient Arthurian legends, a knight of the Round Table must go in quest of the Fisher-King, who defends the Holy Grail. The King has been wounded, rendered powerless and therefore infertile, and consequently all the land is likewise left sterile. Crops do not grow, livestock die, babies are still-born, etc. The quest of the knight, then, is not just for the Grail, or even to heal the Fisher-King, but to restore life itself to the land.

Key to these fragmented, ancient Celtic myths appears to be that the knight seeks to the fisher-king to ask a "loaded question" of some sort. What the answer is appears to be irrelevant. No wisdom is bestowed, no boon granted, no epiphany experienced--in fact, it seems that just the act of asking the question itself, whatever it may be, is the most important part of breaking the curse on the land.

I use this esoteric piece of ancient myth as a round-about way to discuss a "panel" discussion, made up of Bishoprics and their wives, at Church last Sunday. Anonymous questions were submitted, one of which was, "how can singles feel less loneley."

The panelists gave it the ol' college try, giving the standard, generic cheer-leading suggestions to "live life" and "not wait for life to happen to you," to "get out there and serve," throw your own parties, ask people out, read, write, learn, study, do projects, don't just sit there "alone and feeling sorry for yourself." The congregation itself participated in the responses, and one could see their thrashing and struggling, as even the most sincere and well-meaning, I suspect, at least unconsciously, knew they were all wholly inadequate to the question.

Part of their problem is that they didn't really understand the question at all.

For indeed, some people really do just sit alone and feel sorry for themselves on a Friday night, and do need to be told to "get out there" and such, but I don't think that was the entire question.

For other people throw parties and no one comes, or go on dates that go badly, or even just averagely. But even that's not the entire question.

For some people are the life of every party, they enter effortlessly into and liven every conversation, they go on many and great dates, and have fun with all their friends--but then they come back home you see, and the house is still empty. And they know from hard experience that just because things went well tonight doesn't mean they'll go well the next. And that's when the creeping dread sinks in, as they wonder if they will ever fully escape this encroaching loneliness.

And reading literature and studying and learning new things and improving one's self when there is nothing else to do on a Friday night, while commendable and productive, are not ways of replacing the loneliness, but only coping with it--these are mere substitutes, consolation prizes and poor ones at that. An ethos of "Well, I might as well" pervades these sad replacements for relationships, and still does not answer the question.

Frankly, I'm don't think the question has an answer--and I don't mean that despairingly. Quite the inverse, I think an answer that openly acknowledges the difficulty, nay, impossibility of answering that question sufficiently is the most meaningful answer one can given. Folks don't want your impoverished advise, but your acknowledgment. As with the Fisher-King, it is the asking of the question itself that breaks the curse on the land, and not any response of the Fisher-King himself.

The answer that acknowledges its own failure is the only adequate response, is the only right answer, and the only one that enables life to continue. This is paradox that I did not at first understand in Arthurian legend, but lately I have better understood.