Welcome to this conversation
No Strangers - Episode 6: Opting in to Joy, the Gift of Love. As we labor in love close to home and in the world we get tired, we wonder if we can keep going. Is this effort and angst really all worth it? That’s where joy comes in, reminding us of what makes it all worthwhile in the first place. Letting in joy is perhaps the most revolutionary way we can opt into love in 2021! Let’s do it.
Episode 6: Opting in to Joy, the Gift of Love
This is our final podcast of our series exploring revolutionary love as a force to transform, heal and build us into a world with no strangers. Love is wonderful even in the hallmark card and mushy love song sense. Love is revolutionary when you extend it to see no strangers in others, even in your opponents and even in yourself. No strangers. Everything and everyone belongs. That love flows out of wonder… it comes with the price of grief, and the fierceness of anger. Wonder, grief, anger. And today...Joy, the Gift of Love.
Inklings of joy: that momentary sense that you belong just as you are right this moment - and not just to anything, but to something deep and wide and extravagant. You are alive and here, plugged in. All is well – even when it isn’t.
Have you experienced that? Share some of your inklings of joy.
Joy feels good. We all want more joy don’t we? So why isn’t there more of it going around? The Hedonometer and 9-year old Melissa.
Where do you get stuck when you consider “joy?”
Rob Bell’s Introduction to Joy (along with the ancient Jewish wisdom poetry in Ecclesiastes) helps us understand joy’s lightness in the midst of heaviness:
Lightness that is unaware of the heavy stuff. Childlike joy.
Lightness that ignores, denies or minimizes the heavy stuff. Cynicism. A cheap stand in.
Lightness on the other side of heaviness. Been through it joy.
I’ve found that laboring with love allows me space to breathe and creates the conditions to let joy in...I’ve come to believe that laboring for a more just and beautiful world...with love and joy is the meaning of life. -Valarie Kaur
That is a bold statement from Valarie Kaur, shared in The People’s Inauguration (Day 10). What do you think?
”How was your day?” next time you or someone asks…
Take a breath. Notice what tends to come for you to make it more or less “fine.”
Then shift to the questions from Valarie Kaur to help you get beyond the good day/bad day and offer more breathing space:
What was hard today? Sense where you are feeling it. Somehow you managed to make it to the end of this day. How? Name that too.
What was the most joyful part of your day? Every day, no matter how hard, contains moments of joy. Sense what joy feels like and where you feel it. Is it a lightness in your limbs, a relaxing of your jaw, and sense of calm and ease?
How can you make it a habit to step back from the good/bad judgments each day to notice and name your resilience and your joy?
Father Greg Boyle (with Krista Tippet at OnBeing) helps us see how this can be revolutionary. Acknowledged and seen, our wounds become carriers of friendship, healing, purpose. The defensive layers of shame fall away. Acknowledged and seen, strangers become kin. The defensive walls fall away. When there is a crack in those walls or a peeling back of the layers - joy can come in.
χαίρω chairo (Greek word for culmination of being, the good mood of the soul).
χαρά Chara - joy
χάρις charis - grace.
Joy is a grace. It is the sweet in the “sweet labor” of love.
This means pushing through some layers and some walls.
And don’t forget to breathe! Slow down and pay attention with all your senses and attention to this moment. That is where the joy will find you.
If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happens better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.
“Don’t Hesitate” Devotions: Selected Poems of Mary Oliver.
Kali Pliego says she can feel her body give and receive love and joy.
What do resilience and joy feel like in you? Where do you feel them?
As we learn what resilience and joy feel like in us… our emotions and bodies (wounded parts too) become our friends and teachers to help us come back to joy more readily.
We can’t force joy. It is a grace we can only give into. But science, the bible and wisdom teachers from across time and place all point to one practice that helps us give in to joy: Saying thank you. Expressing it, in tangible ways with details!
Find tangible ways to express gratitude this week and see if it makes some new space for joy.
“Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” -Jesus in Matthew 11:28-30 (New Revised Standard Version)
Wonder, grief, anger - all parts of love. And joy is their gift.
It has open arms to hold you - all of you, all of us. Don’t hesitate. Say thank you. Opt in.
There is always work to be done. Some of it can stop and some of it still needs to happen. But you don’t always have to be the one carrying the pack of the work! This week, take stock