Father Richard describes the stunned silence that accompanies moments of awe and surrender:
The spiritual journey is a constant interplay between moments of awe followed by a general process of surrender to that moment. We must first allow ourselves to be captured by the goodness, truth, or beauty of something beyond and outside ourselves. Then we universalize from that moment to the goodness, truth, and beauty of the rest of reality, until our realization eventually ricochets back to include ourselves! Yet we humans resist both the awe and, even more, the surrender. The ego resists the awe while the will resists the surrender. But both together are vital and necessary. [1]
As she often did, Dr. Barbara Holmes (1943–2024) expands and strengthens my thinking by her description of “joy unspeakable.” Awe is not always inspired by beauty and goodness. Truth sometimes comes in hard packages. It takes both great love and great suffering to stun us and bring us to our knees. God is there in all of it, using every circumstance of our life, to draw us ever more deeply into the heart of God. [2]
Dr. Barbara Holmes writes:
Ultimately, joy unspeakable is a mystery, and because each mystery begets another, it is a daunting task to describe the indescribable. Song, dance, and ritual help. This is how Grant Wacker describes the joy that emerges out of spiritual revival: “And then there was joy—not necessarily happiness, a passing emotion—but joy, the quiet, deep-seated conviction that one’s life made sense.” [3]
From the beginning, Africana people in the diaspora have defined the sensibility of their lives within the context of struggle and resistance. We have begun to realize that while overt systematic oppression may be removed, we all bear the scars and traces of racism’s collective demonic possession. And yet we must all go on, and we must all go on together as a community.
Accordingly, our obsession with blame and with the question of who is or is not worthy of God’s full embrace disrupts the journey. For we are not headed toward a single goal: we are on a pilgrimage toward the center of our hearts. It is in this place of prayerful repose that joy unspeakable erupts.
Joy Unspeakable
erupts when you least expect it,
when the burden is greatest,
when the hope is gone
after bullets fly.
It rises
on the crest of impossibility,
it sways to the rhythm
of steadfast hearts,
and celebrates
what we cannot see.
This joy beckons us not as individual monastics but as a community. It is a joy that lives as comfortably in the shout as it does in silence. It is expressed in the diversity of personal spiritual disciplines and liturgical rituals. This joy is our strength, and we need strength because we are well into the twenty-first century, and we are not healed. How shall we negotiate postmodernity without inner strength? [4]
References:
[1] Adapted from Richard Rohr, Just This (CAC Publishing, 2017), 10.
[2] Adapted from Richard Rohr, “Awe and Joy,” Daily Meditations, February 12, 2021.
[3] Grant Wacker, Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture (Harvard University Press, 2001), 67.
[4] Barbara A. Holmes, Joy Unspeakable: Contemplative Practices of the Black Church, 2nd ed. (Fortress Press, 2017), 199–200.
Ya’ Wahyu, untitled (detail), 2024, photo, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. Two children splash in sun-warmed water: every droplet and ripple radiating joy.
Story from Our Community:
Dancing has always been my joy and a way for me to experience connection with others and with God. I belong to a circle dancing group that learns traditional dances from different countries. When we move together, I sense the flow of the Spirit and connection with other souls, past and present. It is a form of prayer for us.
—Ann B.
