This Joy Stuff

Any of us, at any time of the year, struggle with the feeling of joy. But the one-two punch of Christmas and New Year’s --- both draped with heavy idealism and optimism--- is especially challenging. The media is no help, with its serious-to-silly “Best and Worst of the Year in Review” time and space killers, reminding us mostly of what’s been lost and what asses human beings can be, especially as a group.

So this morning, with assassinations and riots spicing up the normal hash of murder, rape, slander and greed, how can I sustain, or even begin to have, this constant condition of JOY?

First, I have to believe that God/Cosmos maintains a balance of plusses and negatives throughout the physical and spiritual worlds (when, O when can we stop dividing them!) The more optimistic among us would say that good outbalances the evil if we could tally it up properly. Here’s a monk in one of Buechner’s novels:

“Sometimes this star is still. Sometimes she dances. She is Mary’s star. Within that little pool of water she winks at me. I wink at her. The secret that we share I cannot tell in full. But this much I will tell. What’s lost is nothing to what’s found, and all the death that ever was, set next to life, would scarcely fill a cup.”

Second, I can’t wage huge crusades against these unspeakable crimes and horrors. In my humble and seemingly inconsequential day-to-day meetings with people, I must try in some little way to had some weight to the good, compassionate, caring, and –yes---joyful side of the equation.