Juneteenth
Reflecting on the protests in the United States after the murder of George Floyd, writer Danté Stewart shares how, when watching video footage of protest marchers, he witnessed joy and hope amid suffering:
I saw scores of young folk, fists held high in the sky, their lungs exhausted from all the screaming they did. I saw scores of old folk, some with canes, some in wheelchairs pushed by another, their lungs exhausted from all the screaming they did. I saw scores of gay folk and straight folk, Muslim folk and Christian folk, American folk and global folk, rich folk and poor folk, all lungs exhausted from all the screaming they did….
I looked again at … the videos of millions marching in solidarity, and I saw so much more. I saw joy. I saw intimacy. I saw bodies let loose. I saw tears of strength in the face of danger. I saw heaven smiling as love was cast on Earth’s threshing floor. I saw so much joy. It was not simply resistance; it was power. I saw the good news. I saw a better story than the story we were offered. The beauty of this moment showed that suffering is not the total image. This is a moment of faith, flying one would say. I see an unexpected glimpse into public bravery, the willingness to rise again. There is something about these images that calls out to me to sit still; to ponder, to anticipate life beyond brutality.
This joy is love dancing with reality, humanity. I saw the complex and complicated relationship with hope, a tragic but necessary one if it is to become what it can become— beautiful. [1]
Essayist Ross Gay connects sorrow, joy, and solidarity:
What happens if joy is not separate from pain? What if joy and pain are fundamentally tangled up with one another? Or even more to the point, 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? What if joy, instead of a refuge or relief from heartbreak, is what effloresces from us as we help each other carry our heartbreaks?…
My hunch is that joy is an ember for or precursor to wild and unpredictable and transgressive and unboundaried solidarity. And that that solidarity might incite further joy. Which might incite further solidarity. And on and on. My hunch is that joy, emerging from our common sorrow—which does not necessarily mean we have the same sorrows, but that we, in common, sorrow—might draw us together. It might depolarize us and de-atomize us enough that we can consider what, in common, we love. And though attending to what we hate in common is too often all the rage (and it happens also to be very big business), noticing what we love in common, and studying that, might help us survive. It’s why I think of joy, which gets us to love, as being a practice of survival. [2]
References:
[1] Danté Stewart, Shoutin’ in the Fire: An American Epistle (Convergent, 2021) 249, 251–252.
[2] Ross Gay, Inciting Joy: Essays (Algonquin Books, 2022), 4, 9–10.
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:
When the cool weather starts to set in and the leaves fall from the trees, I lay my hands on the trunks and bless them. I thank the trees for the many ways they brought my family joy and provided a sanctuary during their season of growth. I bid the trees good night, and I pray that they will have a blessed winter’s rest. Likewise, each spring, when warmer days arrive, I lay my hands upon them and invite them to awaken to a new season. I ask them to stretch their boughs to the heavens, and together, with the trees, we worship the Divine Creator. This has become my spiritual practice each season, greeting nature each spring and blessing its good rest each winter.
—Katie C.
