Joy--The Last Frontier

We are more comfortable with pain, grief, anger, anxiety, fear,  resignation, frustration, irritation, worthlessness, alienation, loneliness, boredom--almost any state--than with joy.  Why?

I once had a theology student who had been severely abused as a child and young adult.  She told me this was her prayer: "God grant me greater and greater tolerance for joy."  The most difficult part of her spiritual journey was welcoming and trusting joy. She knew her way around and finally through the other feelings.  But allowing herself to experience joy was a challenge.

For many years I have carried her teaching with me.  And several times over the last decades I have experienced the truth that she had come to know.  How joy hides under layers of anger and grief.  How if you dive below those layers,deep, deep, deeper, it is there, a fundament of joy.  I have felt it, touched it.  It always comes as a surprise.  A calm rejoicing in the beauty of the world, as it is, in this moment. An experience in which you feel profoundly at home in the world and grateful for all that is, overflowing with gratitude for the beautiful garden in which you live.  A moment that changes your way of being in the world, chasing out all anxiety, shame, grief, care and catching you up in wonder and oneness. This is joy. 

I know that fundament of joy is always there, supporting my existence at every moment, making it possible.  I know how enlivening, transforming it is to touch it.  And yet I still hesitate to touch it.  I am not sure why.  Perhaps I fear its intensity?  No. Does it make me uncomfortable because I feel I am not worthy of it?  Not any longer.  Maybe I fear the loss of joy, once that glorious moment of peace and oneness has worn off and I am once again left in my familiar and dull world drained of joy--better not to know what is possible, or to forget. Maybe.  It is hard to remember joy.  For in remembering our experiences of joy--with other people, in nature, with the One--we become acutely aware that that experience has passed, and we grieve its absence. Yet I would rather the pain of remembering.  No. None of these.  

                Remembering Joy

Once, undressing for bed, I found
my thighs—knees to hips—blooming with bruises,
smoky purples, brilliant reds, patches of dull yellow
washed with green, and blackened paths wandering
through the twin gardens.
A sudden shock of beauty.
Tender to the touch.

Had I fallen? Bumped a countertop?
And forgotten as one forgets the last breath?
Had a steel bar fallen from the roof and struck me?
Had someone truncheoned me for secrets?
But why?  And when?  Surely I would remember.
Was it disease then?  Hidden in my flesh for years,
surfacing now to announce my death?

I laid my palms on each warm thigh to hear
what they would tell me.
It was you, they said.  This morning. 
To learn the drumbeat of the songs, so you would not forget,
your hands were beating out the rhythms
on live animal skin stretched over a frame of bone.
You were dancing and drumming.  You would not stop.  It was you.  It was joy.

It took me over ten years to remember how surprised I was by this experience of joy.  It took the hard evidence of my bruised body to show it to me, then and now.  And what it showed me was  not only the surprise of joy, but my fear of it and resistance to it. 

Here is what I realized:  I fear joy itself.  Being truly alive.  If I touch that living reality, what will happen?  What waves of change will sweep my life, my world out from under me?  For nothing can remain the same afterwards. Something will be bruised.  And what will be required of me?  For something will be required.   Not as payment but as gift.

This memory of the joy I experienced drumming and the teaching of the remarkable student I once knew have urged me forward.  My prayer is this:  Wellspring of Joy, turn my fear into trust and open my heart to the fundament of joy.  Let me peel away the habits of fear, anger, and grief and learn the habit of recognizing and welcoming the joy at the heart of existence, the life-giving joy that is constantly present around, among, and within us, in our reach.  

May our trust and joy increase.