Amid the chaos of kings, remember to look for possibilities

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 15/01/2025 (261 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Early January seems to be a time for kings, especially this year. As Epiphany overlaps Orthodox Christmas, “we three kings of Orient are” visit the Bethlehem stable and offer their gifts to the child “born to be king of the Jews” (Matthew 2:2)

We have just witnessed the state funeral of another “king,” as former U.S. president Jimmy Carter was honoured by five presidents and many others. Then, there is the pending inauguration of Donald Trump 2.0, whose behaviour certainly warrants the title of “The Man Who Would Be King.”

While we have awkwardly learned to sing God Save the King in Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s resignation means losing our local current political leader. With no succession plan, chaos is ascendant here, as it is elsewhere.

In a time of kings, when lesser folks are treated badly, or forced (like Joseph and his family) to flee as refugees to a foreign land, we also need to be reminded, in the midst of chaos, that there are always more possibilities than we are at first able to see.

So, as a commoner confronted by a January surfeit of royalty, I thought of this cartoon. Behind the illusion offered by pomp, circumstance and ceremony, there is always a more prosaic truth.

The wise men/three kings/Magi are standing outside the stable, and one says to the other two: “Look, I know we just agreed to give him the gold, but this place really smells.”

If you know the Epiphany story (or the carol), you know the other two gifts were expensive perfumes: frankincense and myrrh. I have always wondered why. Gold is obvious, but perfumes? Not so much — so perhaps this cartoon offers a good explanation.

If by now you have looked more closely at it, however, you will see the autograph in the corner: “Gruber and Denton.”

For me, this cartoon has always been a sign of hope and new possibilities.

When I went to kindergarten, I won no prizes for artistic creativity. Even as a five year-old, I lagged so far behind my classmates that my frustrated teacher archly informed my parents their first-born had “absolutely no artistic ability whatsoever.” (I have an odd memory, and remember some things — like this assessment — when I have long forgotten everything else.)

So, literally, every time I pick up a drawing pencil, that assessment echoes in my head and the results are uniformly disastrous. I have always dreaded family efforts to play Pictionary, because whichever team was saddled with me was bound to lose, though with great hilarity at my repeated humiliation.

Worse, to compound my own frustration, despite this artistic inability, I have a cartoon brain. The world spawns a continual series of cartoons for me every day; detailed images that are forever locked inside.

Fast-forward 35 years. One day before Christmas, at Trinity United Church in Portage la Prairie where I was working, I complained to the secretary, Lesia Case. I told her about my cartoon problem, and how I had a good one about the three kings at the stable that I could see but not draw. She simply asked: “Have you met Charlotte?”

So, I met Charlotte Jones — a member of the church, almost as old as my mother, who lived on a Saskatoon berry farm with her husband, Bob, outside of town. She had cartooned for many years, under the pen name “Gruber,” mostly for agricultural newspapers or local publications.

She took that idea of mine, and returned the drawing (as you see it now) in a couple of days. I was stunned — especially when she asked for more ideas, and suggested if we came up with good cartoons, we might trying selling them to religious magazines across Canada.

I sent her a list of scribbled ideas, and we clicked in an extraordinary way. About 80 per cent of those ideas she immediately turned into salable cartoons, with about 15 per cent requiring some revision or two. (The rest, we agreed, were junk!)

So, thanks to Charlotte, this kindergarten artistic failure became an award-winning, published cartoonist. What I couldn’t do by myself happened anyway because I found someone to work with who saw possibilities, and not just obstacles.

We were an unlikely pair, to be sure. No one could imagine we would become a cartooning team that produced over 200 cartoons in six years, selling them to Canada Lutheran, the Presbyterian Record, the United Church Observer and other magazines.

We won three awards in 2000/2001 from the Associated Church Press, a professional association with a circulation of over 25 million. We had a public exhibition of the best ones in the Hamilton Galleria at the University of Winnipeg in 2005, and concluded our partnership by publishing a cartoon in the Saturday Evening Post.

So, I still see cartoons, and I still can’t draw. But, thanks to Charlotte Jones, I know that means I just need to find another way.

Something worth remembering this month, amid the chaos of kings.

Peter Denton writes from his home in rural Manitoba.