Sunday
Cosmic or spiritual joy is something we participate in; it comes from elsewhere and flows through us.
—Richard Rohr
Monday
Joy Unspeakable 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.
—Barbara Holmes
Tuesday
True joy is a limitless, life-defining, transformative reservoir waiting to be tapped. It requires only the utmost surrender and like love, it’s a choice to be made that ultimately transcends time.
—Barbara Holmes
Wednesday
This is the joy that the world cannot give. This is the joy that keeps watch against all the emissaries of sadness of mind and weariness of soul. This is the joy that comforts and is the companion, as we walk even through the valley of the shadow of death.
—Howard Thurman
Thursday
What happens if joy is not separate from pain? What if joy and pain are fundamentally tangled up with one another? What if joy is not only entangled with pain, or suffering, or sorrow, but is also what emerges from how we care for each other through those things?
—Ross Gay
Friday
Don’t forget the power of community to create spaces of joy when you cannot engender the joy yourself. That joy comes during worship, during fellowship, and even during crisis. I’ve always said, the greatest antidote to depression and oppression is joy. There’s joy coming together of one accord.
—Barbara Holmes
Joy Begets Joy
Week Twenty-Five Practice
Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis, host of the CAC podcast Love Period, reminds us to choose joy amid life’s difficulties:
Friends, I believe the bold path to making our lives and the world better is fundamentally lit by the radical, fierce love that all the major religions preach. Though we are outraged by injustice, we don’t get there with just our outrage. We need to get there with our joy, which—according to my friend Father Richard Rohr—is both a decision and a surrender. It’s a decision to look around and recognize and value what is good, what is lovely, what is inspirational—and let that delight us. It’s surrendering to the fact that there is not much we can control in life, but our reactions are within our control. Recognizing joy and embracing it—these are our decisions to make.…
On any given day, your joy might be quiet and peace-filled, tucked way down in your belly. Your joy might be extroverted and raucous, making you dance, sing, and shout. Do you with your joy, be you with your joy, feel it your own way. Every day, like brushing your teeth, focus on it, find it, be fueled by it. It’s inside you, waiting to resource you. To build your resistance and resilience. It will support you, whether in your movement-building or when making sandwiches for your children. It will help you stand up for the other and stand in line for an inoculation. Joy powers kindness; joy begets joy.
Joy is an essential need for the thriving of the human spirit. Without it, we are diminished and too often left with the festering of our wounds, resentments, and fears. Joy is that feeling of well-being, pleasure, and happiness that accompanies us as we move through life. It alters the way we see the world, its people, and ourselves. Joy tints our perspective with optimism and the confidence that we will go through the hard things, and though we might be bruised or battered, we’ll come out on the other side. Joy is the wellspring of resistance, the water of life. Now, close your eyes, take a deep breath, and smile from the inside out. There, there it is. Can you feel it? That’s joy!
Reference:
Jacqui Lewis, Fierce Love: A Bold Path to Ferocious Courage and Rule-Breaking Kindness That Can Heal the World (Harmony Books, 2021), 189, 190–191.
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.
