Public Joy

The current issue of Comment magazine is on the theme of "gift logic." Drawing on the teaching of Jesus, wisdom from St. Basil, the book The Gift by Lewis Hyde, and others, the essays in this issue invite us to consider gift "as a way to engage with the world."

In the essay, "Subverting Two-Pocket Thinking with Public Joy," Tim Soerens introduces the concept of "public joy."

Public joy gets at the pulsing, hopeful, brimming-with-possibility kind of energy that by its very nature requires equity and justice, and celebrates both individual and collective agency. So what is the economy for? If we view our economic life through the lens of grace, then perhaps we could say the purpose is to maximize public joy.

If we remember that we are the creatures (not the Creator) and that all is gift, then of course we all need to orient ourselves toward this grand project of public joy, which necessarily includes everyone. To love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and strength and to love your neighbor as yourself means that all our many gifts should be oriented toward the mission of creating as much public joy as conceivably possible.

This essay offers much to think about. How does my life/my work contribute to public joy? Of course, the use of joy here doesn't mean temporary laughter or an hour or two of enjoyment but joy of the deep and abiding variety, peace, "a visceral pairing of words that taps deep into the biblical idea of shalom."

This month at my work, the team I'm part of has been given the assignment of coming up with our individual goals for the year ahead. I'm a medical writer and so am thinking about how my skills best serve the needs of medical providers and their patients, the needs of the company for whom I work, as well as my own personal needs and interests. This essay introduces the question, How does my work increase public joy, or the potential for public joy? It's an interesting and important question and one I hadn't thought about before. How does the manner in which any and all of us spend our days increase—or offer the potential for increasing—public joy?

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This post was first published in my monthly newsletter, “Dear Reader.” Subscribe here.

Opening a Window

One weekend day in mid-January, a day when the temperature suddenly spiked to just above freezing after so many cold and subzero days, my husband and I went for a drive in celebration of the gift of the day. The sun sparkled in a way that seems to happen only in the winter. (Did you know that the earth is closer to the sun in early January than at any other time of the year?) The sky was brilliantly blue, with the snow reflecting all the light from the sun back into the sky.

I opened the sunroof window.

Oh the joy! We lifted our faces.

You should have seen our smiles. Our delight. The moment lasted only a short while before the car got too cold and I had to close the window. The temperature eventually dropped. Clouds eventually came. Snow. It was, after all, still winter. But that day’s invitation to open the window and turn my face to the light, to the sun's warmth, has stayed with me.

A short while later I opened a book of poetry that I’d bought a year earlier but never yet read, How to Love The World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope, edited by James Crew. Here was a poem called “Promise” by Barbara Crooker, and this is how it began:

The day is an open road
stretching out before you.
Roll down the windows.

Ten more lines follow, and I’d include them all if not for wishing to respect the poet’s copyright, but these lines were what struck me. The third line in particular.

Roll down the windows.

There’s been so much heavy news the last couple years. So much heavy news the last couple weeks. Maybe you also need a prompting to open a window, literally or metaphorically, and turn your face to the sun. Let in the warmth, let in the light, the freshness; let what has gone missing return.

Opening a window in the middle of a very cold season is an act of joy, which means hope is present, because don’t we all hope for joy?

~

[Photo: at a local nature center, thaw circles emerging around plants that soon will be green again.]

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This post was first published in my monthly newsletter, “Dear Reader.” Subscribe here.

Filling with light

The last couple months I've been reading through the Gospels using The Message paraphrase by Eugene Peterson. Reading through the eleventh chapter of Luke, here's what caught my attention: "Your eye is a lamp, lighting up your whole body. If you live wide-eyed in wonder and belief, your body fills with light."

Maybe as a child, like me, you learned and sang the song, "This little light of mine, I'm going to let it shine," based on other translations of this verse. The light in me for others. Yes to this; a wonderful thing to be taught early in life. But I appreciate this additional twist that Peterson gives, this emphasis on opening outward, "living wide-eyed in wonder and belief," not in the sense of responsibility but in the joyful sense of becoming filled with light.

Sprinklers and Robins in Times of Drought

Here in Minnesota, as in much of the United States, we’re in a drought. While watering of lawns is discouraged, strategic watering along the root zone of trees is encouraged, and so we’ve set up this old sprinkler to occasionally deliver a small targeted dose to our beloved teenaged river birch tree lest it fail to thrive. Yesterday, shortly after the sprinkler was turned on, a family of robins appeared and stood and shook their feathers under the falling streams. This smaller female stayed around longer and was particularly intent on getting what she needed. A drink. Can you see her sticking her beak in the spray, right at the source? She drank again and again. I’m so glad I got this shot; I’m so glad she got some water. This morning I read a poem in Christian Wiman’s collection, “Joy.” The poem is by Norman MacCaig and is called “One of the Many Days.” Here’s the line that jumped out at me: “I watched / a whole long day / release its miracles.”

New Year's Intentions — 2021

I’ve posted this list of intentions a number of times over the years, although with slight edits each time. Here it is again for several reasons: because there are readers for whom this list has meaning, because this blog has new readers for whom this list might be of interest, and because I need to put it in front of myself once again as a reminder of a chosen way of being, particularly after this past year when even being was particularly hard. “Intention,” rather than “resolution,” is a good word to use in this setting because it implies something to work toward, move toward, rather than something at which you either succeed or fail. This isn’t about succeeding or failing.

Here's the list:

Experiment more.
Create more; consume less.
Trust more; worry less.
Read more; write more; watch less.
Write more of what lasts longer.
Waste less time.
Spend more time in "creative idleness."
Spend less; save more.
Pray more, including for the people who read the words I write.
Use more paper, lots of paper.
Use a pen more, a keyboard less.
Love more.
Talk less but say more.
Figure out how patience and urgency co-exist.
Hope always.
Cook more; eat less.
Play the piano more.
Pursue truth, beauty, and goodness at every opportunity; realize every moment is an opportunity.
Stand up straighter.
Speak more often in the strength of my own voice.
Find the way to do what needs to be done; sit quietly and wait for the Lord.
Accept paradox.
Pray more, pray without ceasing.
Hope more absolutely.
Be more available to and vulnerable with God and others.
See the signs, ask for signs; be more willing to step into the unknown.
Use less; have less; give more away.
Shorten my to-do lists.
More intentionally be a conduit for the flow of God's grace to the world.
Be silent more often.
Pray more fervently for safety coast to coast but live less fearfully.
Remind myself as often as needed where true hope lies.
Start fewer projects but finish more of those I start.
Be encouraged.
Be excited.
Hope more purely.
Be more attuned to the burdens of the people I pass on the street as well as those
with whom I share a table or a home.
Pray for the world and its leaders.
Love God with ever more of my heart, soul, strength, and mind.
Thank more.
Eat less sugar but more dark chocolate.
Practice not worrying.
Embrace joy.
Seek joy.
Share joy.
 

I'd love to hear some of your intentions. If you want, you can share them in the comments below.

~~~

[Photo: taken of a most inviting scene I saw inside a planter pot.]

Glory to God

Please do click on this photo and listen to the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra singing "Glory to God" from Handel's Messiah.

Here are the lyrics:

Glory to God!
Glory to God in the highest,
And peace on earth.
Glory to God!
Glory to God! Glory to God in the highest,
And peace on earth.

Goodwill toward men.

Glory to God!
Glory to God in the highest,
And peace on earth.

Goodwill toward men.
Goodwill.

Glory to God!
Glory to God in the highest!

Listen to Your Life

As I sat down for my morning prayer a few days ago, my eye fell on a book tucked into the bookshelf next to my chair: Listening to Your Life, a compilation of daily readings from the writing of Frederick Buechner. Seeing the book caught my attention because just the night before I had seen and read the book’s title quote somewhere online. Then after noticing the book on the shelf, after opening and starting to read the morning prayer from the Celtic Prayer Book, which I often use in the morning, I saw there again was the same Buechner quote. When I randomly come across the same thing multiple times in a relatively short period of time I usually take it as a sign to pay attention. So this morning I’m paying attention to Buechner. I’m also passing on the quote to you, because maybe this is something one of you, dear readers, may want to attend to as well.

“Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.”

A couple posts ago I wrote about joy being a word I’m attending to this year, not as a blog marketing theme, but in a personal sense. These words of Buechner speak to me of joy in the midst of life. In the midst of an imperfect life. Is your life imperfect as well? Touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it. Buechner’s words are a cue to use everything in us to perceive the grace that’s all around. All moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.

~~~

[Photo: Daffodils! A gift this week from a friend]