Thanks for joining day 38 on my 40-day journey of personal reflection during the season of Lent. I am sharing a new story with a new song each day during Lent. The songs have accompanied me through life, not just as favorites, but songs and artists that have carved deep rivers through my soul. I hope you find some light, hope, and possibly love in these stories.
“I declare there will be joy”
Joy has many meanings, some temporary and some much deeper. When we move toward the deeper meanings, joy is not something that can be whistled into action like a trained dog or an instant cure when something gets stuck in our craw. Joy is deep within us, a part of us. Yes, sometimes it’s hard to see, but my best bet is all of us have a birthright to joy. It does need to be cultivated.
Our Jewish friends are in the midst of Passover. Families are having Seder dinners and gathering daily through the holiday reflecting deep joy in hard-won freedom. Joy did not come easy. Joy runs deep and is a constant ebb and flow of one’s being. It is found even within hard times. There is a term for this: Simcha.
In Islam, the term for a joy found in the tranquility of one’s heart is Suroor. During Ramadan, Suroor is central, cultivated throughout the holy month during fasting and the breaking of fasts.
Perhaps my favorite religion due to its staunch beauty, Hinduism, claims joy as what I mentioned earlier: Our birthright. It is the things of this world, distractions, the extremities of our days, that can make joy hard to experience. Yet, processes of cultivation through selfless acts, study, and devotion help rip away the barriers to self-realization. Ananda is the word Hindus use for this.
I learned about the practice of Mudita from Buddhist monk Pema Chodron. Buddhists build joy through meditation. It is a process to help deal with our ego through visualizing a person, perhaps someone who we consider joyful, and being happy for them. From there, we extend that circle to others, even to the point of being happy for enemies.
For Christians, joy is recognized as fruit of the spirit. It is something you stay or abide in. Much like Mudita, it grows as a person stays connected to faith. A word I had never heard in a service or song during my time in church, Chara, describes this Christian joy. I am glad I ran across it, even if years later and on another path.
While I don’t do justice to these terms for joy in our world’s great faiths, I do see a coalescing of how the deep waters of joy flow freely over the borders of religion. It’s powerful.
Today, on day 38 of my wilderness to light journey, with only two more stories to go and in the homestretch of the holiest periods of the year for so many faiths, I find myself meditating on that power of our combined joy.
I have written about our distractions, the fringes who want to keep us from joy. I have grappled with the realities that a shaky world can be hard to navigate. We are pummeled by messages of how if we will just come together to defeat enemies everything will be alright. If we drop enough bombs, all will be well. That’s not joy.
I tend to think there is a better coalition, a better war to wage, one that isn’t led by dullards and opportunists. I tend to believe in a coalition of joy. I will never question a person’s path to joy, for when I look at the different people in my world from so many different paths, I see that we all possess the power of joy. It is in combination with each other, in recognizing that we are all in the same boat that we can tap into the power of universal joy.
Today I add RAYE’s “Joy.” to my soon to be complete 40-day playlist. “Joy.” is the second song of the same title in the playlist, but with a twist. Earlier I added Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds “Joy”. But, that song doesn’t have a period in the title.
Nick’s song comes from a different place. All songs about joy do. You see, all our experiences are different, but we can understand and empathize with someone else’s heartache and pain.
“Joy.” (RAYE’s version) is a declaration. She is not simply calling upon joy to fix a problem, she is calling on her very nature to overcome the temporary pain we all experience. The chorus is the famous King David Psalm. I hope we all find the joy that exists in each of us. The world could use it now, all of it.
And remember, if the Devil doesn’t like it he can sit on a tack!
Thanks for reading. Playlist links are below. In the final two days we will see the Sun shine brightly at the end of the tunnel. I can’t wait to share what’s next.
Apple Music Playlist: 40-From Wilderness to Light
Spotify Music Playlist: 40-From Wilderness to Light
oh yes someone said the j word