Attending to joy

At the beginning of 2020 I chose a word for the year. I’ve never done this before, but this year some inner nudge got my attention. Joy. I chose joy. This year I’m going to attend to joy. Maybe the inner nudge came because I need to take joy more seriously. The pursuit of joy. The holding of joy. The claiming of and recognition of joy. A few days into the new year I searched my blog for posts that are about or that mention joy. Lots of posts appeared, including the last post I wrote in 2019, which to my surprise, actually had “joy” in its title. I hope you’ll click on the joy link and see what you can find. I’ll add some more as the year goes on. I’m still working on my hope manuscript, but I’m doing so while being alert to appearances of joy.

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[Photo: a lovely rock with a lovely message]

Handwringing versus joy and expectation; talking versus serving

The most recent issue of Comment (fall 2019) carries an editorial by the journal's editor, Anne Snyder, which I've been thinking about since first reading it a couple weeks ago. You can read it here at this link, and I encourage you to do so.

Snyder contrasts two approaches to societal concerns based on and expanding from her observations of two groups within a single weekend. One approach was full of handwringing, while the other was full of joy and expectation. The first emerged primarily from the elite while the second primarily from those who were "indigenous, immigrant, Asian, Latin, and African American." The first featured panels and debates while the second featured actual service in churches, social agencies, schools, and counselling centers within home neighborhoods."

She suggests the first group has much to learn from the second group. The churches associated with the first group tend to focus on preaching and teaching, whereas the churches associated with the second group often tend to function as the "field hospitals Pope Francis speaks about—welcoming everyone, regardless of sin or circumstance, and caring for the needs of the whole person, not just the soul." They often offer job banks and homeless shelters to their community in addition to the preaching and teaching.

"This realism," writes Snyder, "grants these local churches moral authority—not only in their home community, but in the world at large. And they offer an important lesson: If you want entrée to a hurting if skeptical world, care for it, don’t try to rule it."

And here’s one more thing she wrote in this editorial, "There’s a growing awareness that love can never be abstracted—we’re touched by incarnational living and doing, less prescription from on high."

So much is abstract these days with our social media tweets and Instagram shots, our disagreements about the evening news; I write this as a challenge to myself as much as to anyone. I do hope you’ll read her full editorial and consider what she wrote.

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Interesting coincidence: when writing this post I found that the link in the above editorial by Anne Synder went to the same article featuring Pope Francis, which I had first read 6 years ago, that I had linked to in the prior post. Of all the pieces that have been written about Pope Francis what are the odds that my two little posts, whose origins are years apart, link to the same one? I believe there is something significant in coincidence, that a message of "pay attention" is being given even if I don't understand why. Maybe it is saying something to you? I wrote a bit more about this in my newsletter.

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[Photo: taken of stars in the windows of the American Swedish Institute.]

Lifted Faces and Flashing Eyes

From the blog archives (February 11, 2016), a post about the human spirit:

I’ve been reading a book by Elton Trueblood, Alternative to Futility. Trueblood, a Quaker theologian, wrote the book in the late 1940s in response to the prevalent sense of futility in society around him despite the end of World War II. In many ways he could have been writing today.

This paragraph jumped off the page at me:

“Joy has gone out of much of our lives. Millions go through the motions as though they were waiting for a catastrophe. What we miss, almost everywhere, is the uplifted face and the flashing eye. Men [and women] cannot live well either in poverty or abundance unless they see some meaning and purpose in life, which alone can be thrilling.”

Trueblood goes on to describe societal ways in which the human spirit can be renewed. While some of his suggestions and ideas are a bit dated, this key – and timeless– theme emerges: the need for communities to be a place of renewal for each other.

In a chapter called “The Habit of Adventure.” he wrote:

“Here then is our clue. The method which succeeded before must be tried again and we must not be dismayed by its amazing simplicity. The best chance for the renewal of the human spirit in the twentieth [read: twenty-first] century, as in the first, lies in the formation of genuinely redemptive societies in the midst of ordinary society. Such fellowships could provide a sense of meaning for the members within the societies and, at the same time, maintain an infectious influence on the entire culture outside.”

Through my little blog and my little books, I’m trying, in a small way, to offer this to you. A space of community and camaraderie in which we lift our faces and not only open our eyes, but flash them, as Trueblood wrote. I like that image of emanating light. It’s my hope, and assumption, you have other real-time spaces in your life for this renewal: churches, family, friends, book groups, special interest groups, and so on. There are also opportunities for such spaces online, and I hope you’re finding what you need wherever you can. Please consider letting me know how I can do better at providing such a space. Also consider letting me know where else you find community and and camaraderie that encourages you to lift your face and flash your eyes - if I get enough response to this I may include them in a subsequent newsletter or blog post.

Thank you for taking the time to read. As always, I appreciate it so very much.

~~~

[Photo: taken of a new walkway along a nearby creek. I love how the sun is flashing off the metal coils.]

A Sign Pointing the Way [to the Beach]

One afternoon this past week I got up from my desk to take a walk. I walked down a street I'd never been before and something caught my eye and delivered joy. In the corner of a yard, just along the sidewalk, but nearly hidden by garden overgrowth, was a small metal sign that said "BEACH." The letters were cut-outs, which made the sign particularly hard to see given that the foliage behind it showed through (see the banner photo). My guess is many have walked right past it as I would have also if some unknown something hadn't caused me to look in the exact right place and in the exact right way. Above the word was a figure that appeared to be in motion, ready to leap from a board (diving or surf?) or simply from the sand into the water. Under the word was an arrow pointing the way.

I wondered about the arrow given as there was no beach across the street or on the next street over. It struck me first as wishful thinking, but then I thought some more and indeed there is a beach in the direction of the arrow if you go down a few blocks then find your way either to a walking path or the road alongside a lake and wind around a bit before coming to a rather small parking area and follow another path down to a nearly hidden beach.

The sign in the yard had a hint of something to be found. A sign of something good in the direction it pointed. A spark of joy, a promise, a silent companion on the road.

Keep your eyes open!

~~~

[Photo: taken of the BEACH sign. A spark of joy, yes?]

Hope on the pages of children's books

A recent article in The Guardian suggested five children’s books every adult should read. Katherine Rundell, author of the article, the newly released Why You Should Read Children's Books, Even Though You Are So Old and Wise (Bloomsbury), as well as numerous children’s fiction books, says that she writes for two audiences—herself now and herself at age 12 years—putting into a limited number of words what she most wants “children to know and adults to remember.” Rundell suggests adults should read children’s books from time to time for intrusions of “sustaining truths,” which often can only come to us through imagination.

One of the sustaining truths that adults need to remember, according to Rundell, is hope.

“Children’s books say: the worlds is huge. They say: hope counts for something, bravery will matter, wit, empathy, love will matter.”

Rundell writes that to see hope as well as other truths on the page, we need imagination:

“When you read a children’s book, you are given the space to read again as a child: to find your way back, back to the time when new discoveries came daily and when the world was colossal, before your imagination was trimmed and neatened, as if it were an optional extra. But imagination is not and never has been optional: it’s at the heart of everything, the thing that allows us to experience the world from the perspective of others, the condition precedent of love itself. For that we need books that are specifically written to give the heart and mind a galvanic kick—children’s books. Children’s fiction necessitates distillation; at its best, it renders in their purest, most archetypal forms hope, hunger, joy, fear.”

The five children’s books identified by Rundell in the article, which she recommends that adults read, are The Paddington books by Michael Bond, His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman, Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak, One Dog and His Boy by Eva Ibbotson, and Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie.

We still have many of the children’s books from when our sons were young, a handful of which have been brought up from the basement bookshelves so as to be handy to read them to our new grandson. Here now in front of me is Harriet and the Garden, written by Nancy Carlson. I’m flipping through the pages and indeed hope is there: Harriet has run into Mrs. Hoozit’s garden, trampling her lilies, rose bushes, and prize dahlia, while trying to catch a fly ball in a neighborhood ball game. She feels so badly, so guilty, that she runs home and tries to pretend it didn’t happen or that it didn’t matter even though she can’t eat, can’t enjoy her favorite television show, can’t sleep without having bad dreams. The next day she goes to Mrs. Hoozit and tells her what she did. Mrs. Hoozit brings her out to the garden, and they work together to fix what is broken. A picture* shows them side by side, mending plants. Indeed this is a book filled with hope: that what is broken will be restored. People and relationships as well as plants.

As I read books to my grandson, not yet a year old, I’m going to keep my eyes open for infusions of hope from the pages.

What children’s books have spoken to you of hope?

~~

[Photo at top: taken of daisies.]

[*Photo from Harriet book: Carlson, Nancy. Harriet and the Garden. Minneapolis, MN; Carolrhoda Books, Inc.: 1982.]

With thanks to Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver, superlative poet and essayist, died this past week at the age of 83. I first started reading her work, particularly her essays, in mid-life when I was in graduate school. Reading her was like having a friend next to me, urging me on to pay attention, to pause, to look, to wonder, to praise. In Long Life: Essays and Other Writing, Oliver wrote:

“And that is just the point: how the world, moist and bountiful, calls to each of us to make a new and serious response. That's the big question, the one the world throws at you every morning, ‘Here you are, alive. Would you like to make a comment?’"

When I heard that she had died, I took Long Life off my bookshelf and went through, re-reading the lines I’d starred and underlined.

Here are a few of the other lines my eyes landed on:

“What does it mean, say the words, that the earth is so beautiful? And what shall I do about it? What is the gift that I should bring to the world? What is the life that I should live?”

And this:

“I walk in the world to love it.”

And this:

"And here I build a platform, and live upon it, and think my thoughts, and aim high. To rise, I must have a field to rise from. To deepen, I must have a bedrock from which to descend." ( I had wanted to use this as an epigraph for Finding Livelihood but due to permission issue I had to cut it.)

This morning, here in Minneapolis, the sky is blue and sunny, the air cold. New snow, not much, is glistening white. Although the thermometer reads –1°, it is all so beautiful. Oliver wrote, “There is a rumor of total welcome among the frosts of the winter morning. Beauty has its purposes, which, all our lives and at every season, it is our opportunity, and our joy, to divine.”

May you divine much beauty, live the life yours to live, think thoughts and aim high, walk and love. I thank Mary Oliver for writing and sharing her deeply meaningful words. If you have some words of Oliver’s to share, I’d love to read them in the comments.

~

I’m experimenting with providing an audio version of my posts. Let me know what you think!

~~~

To read other posts I’ve written about Mary Oliver, click here.

[Photo: taken of a painting viewed at the Minnesota Museum of American Art: “March Idyll or Winter Landscape, Woodstock” by John Fabian Carlson; used with permission. I love that crack in the sky in the upper left corner that tells you the sun is about to break through. I think Mary Oliver would also have loved it.)

Fred Rogers and Repairing Creation

A little over a week ago I watched the new documentary about Fred Rogers, Won’t You Be My Neighbor? Have you seen it? I have fond memories of my sons calmly and happily watching Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood on television when they were little, and while I have always been grateful for Fred Rogers, I was ever more so after watching the documentary.

I’ve been thinking since about how Fred Rogers became who he was and what he has to say to us, even us grown-ups, about who we become. From all that was shared in the documentary, two things, in particular, stand out.

The first is that he was a minister with a degree from Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. He worked in television before going to seminary and after he graduated from seminary. He knew that being a minister was not limited to standing behind a pulpit, as valuable as that definition of minister is. A man or woman who has prepared to serve God, or intends to serve God whether or not a degree is behind that intention, can do so in a multitude of ways.

The second is what he had to say to all of us, even and especially us grown-ups, about what we do with our lives. In a special television appearance after 9/11, he challenged his listeners to be about something big:

“No matter what our particular job, especially in our world today, we all are called to be tikkun olam, repairers of creation. Thank you for whatever you do, wherever you are, to bring joy and life and hope and faith and pardon and love to your neighbor and to yourself.”

Read that phrase again: Repairers of creation.

Today with the strong, and sometimes misguided, emphasis on finding one’s unique vocation or “call” and following only that perceived path, this reminder that each of us is to be about the mending of creation by bringing joy, life, hope, faith, pardon, and love to the world around us no matter our job—in any job, in every job—is so needed.

If you haven’t seen the documentary, maybe you can still catch it in a theater. If not, for about the cost of a hamburger or large latte you can watch it on iTunes or another online service. I do hope you will.

~~~

[photo: taken on a recent autumn walk]