Promises of Joy
Whew - Sometimes JOY is hard! It took me quite a few tears to get here this week.
I think I was worried about over-simplifying JOY.
While writing and gathering resources about JOY a month or so ago when sketching out our Create In Me series , unless I was specific - almost everything that came up initially was about happiness. Now, I love happiness. It’s a good thing! But it is not the same thing as JOY and the distinction matters.
When speaking or writing about Ignatian Consolation I often draw a graph on the white board with three intersecting circles. The first - happiness. Then a circle for pleasure. Finally, one for Joy. I usually make a joke at this point, that anytime the three of these circles coincide it is a VERY good day (smile.)
Pleasure and happiness? These are very good things - fruits of being human and alive and far too often sacrificed on the altars of spirituality , racism, sexism - and sometimes even justice. In fact, I recommend the book, Pleasure Activism by adrienne marie brown which fiercely reclaims pleasure - especially for queer folks and womxn of color. I sense that her use of the word is more expansive than the one I use for my circles. But we don’t need to get into a game of semantics - that isn’t particuarly helpful. What CAN be helpful sometimes, is choosing words that help us differentiate between experiences or make distinctions that are helpful as we choose which emotions to follow, choose from, claim, resist, or share.
An example that might help - the words guilt and shame. Casually, these words are often used interchangeably - but more than a few folks use these two words to make a distinction between two very different experiences. I tend to use the word guilt as that feeling that irritates us into reflection or action, that alerts or pulls us back from choices that do not resonate with our values. Whereas, shame is often used to speak to the experience of feeling small, unworthy, a feeling that does more shutting down that irritating our conscience. Both are human experiences, but while guilt in this case is something to follow - shame is something to tend and not to follow. Shame begets shame - until it heals.
I’m sure this is an odd reflection on JOY so far! Trust me, we are getting closer.
In deference to other uses of the words - I’m going to use the versions from my consolation circles to help us explore joy
Happiness is a feeling. It is lovely, but usually fleeting, often situational or chemical. Pleasure again, is wonderful - usually attached to an experience or encounter. Happiness & pleasure are somewhat predictable - they make sense. They follow from a cause. I’m eating a peach and the pleasure of the sweetness and flavor - that is pleasure. If I want that pleasure again - I need to find another peach. It is rooted in the encounter with our senses, with creation. Pleasure is radical because some encounters are limited or restricted for a variety of reasons - poverty, oppression, incarceration, respectability, worthiness - all of these can limit someone’s access to certain pleasure. I do not deny the value of either happiness or pleasure. And I wish them for all of us
And. It is valuable to distinguish them both from Joy.
JOY is beyond situational. It is beyond experiences of happiness or pleasure, even contentment or comfort. It is a grace - a radical one - often irrational or illogical - showing up in ways that are unexpected.
Unimaginable. Even miraculous.
And yet - it is always available. As soon as we long for joy - before even the whisper of prayer begins to form - the promise of Joy begins to unfold in our lives. It unfolds and spills, like scented oil or unfurling fabrics, the green sprouts from a tulip bulb, or the lilt of music we hear in our minds. It is not dependent on happiness or even circumstances - in fact it can visit us behind bars, on sick beds, when we are on our knees in tearful lament. We need neither happiness nor pleasurable encounters to find Joy
Joy is the unexpected character in stories that we could have sworn were only about loss or death. It is obstinate in the face of closed doors, and more persistent than the hardest heart.
This does not mean we cannot still refuse it.
There is still consent.
One of my favorite (most familiar to my experience?) poems is from Mary Oliver:
We shake with joy, we shake with grief. What a time they have, these two housed as they are in the same body.
I imagine everyone reading this essay has had a rough couple of years - and if not recently - then at some point - we have known grief. In the deepest wells of my own - I was scared to receive joy. Some days it felt like a betrayal. Other days I refused to trust its power to stay.
As I searched for our video photos for this week - I became fascinated that images for joy and images for longing looked so similar: A wild openness, a depth of surrender, heart forward, arms open, receptivity and supplication all at once.
Joy - once conceived - continues to expand.
We WILL think we’ve lost it. We WILL find it difficult to recognize. We WILL mistakenly look for it in pleasure and we WILL think it disappears with our happiness. Fear and comparison, regret and shame WILLmuddle our perception.
But JOY is a promise. It is inherent to creation.
The French philosopher and scientist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin once said, “Joy is the most infallible sign of the presence of God.”
Let us practice what liberates us - frees us to receive and respond and believe.
May Joy meet you wherever you are.