“Tears in which pain and joy flow together do justice to life in its fullness. Indeed, we are lost, but Life knows the way home.”
— David Steindl-Rast
This holiday season, there is a profound incongruence in our world situation, within our families, and within ourselves. The lights, traditions, and expectations of the season may feel hollow compared to the uncertainty and violence in the world and perhaps in the face of one's own crippling depression. So you may struggle mightily when the season calls for celebration. We know that grief and sorrow have no convenient timetable at such a time.
We cannot deny the existence of suffering or situations we cannot fix. Superficial platitudes only exacerbate the pain. But consider how it is when an inexplicably small light can surprise you by its sudden appearance in times of distress and sorrow, should you look up to notice.
If you are reading this, you are no stranger to suffering. Yet I invite you to grapple with your own beating heart when it responds to sudden joy. It can show up quite unexpectedly. It can even present a dilemma, because joy is a confusing grace in difficult times.
Joy is mercurial: a moment of unanticipated connection, a surprising realization or a revelation, or even a sweet and hilarious story about the dead at a funeral that can open the heart. Out of the blue, that jolt of joy may present a challenge. Is it disrespectful or strange to have such moments despite a difficult situation? Because there it is, a minuscule awakening. This is the mystery of joy in such times.
It is evidence that the opposite of despair is in fact that tremendous power of kindness and the relentlessness of life—your own.
Perhaps you want to cling to that sweet moment, but then it is gone. Nevertheless, something may have cracked through the darkness. Joy is when the lines of pain and sorrow come together in a wild wilderness of goodness.
Joy is the truth, the justice that you fight for what you believe in. It can help you thrive and heal even though you cannot fix the world. Joy is the courage to say the truth and mean it, even as you tremble when you listen to your own voice. Joy the inexplicable moment that lights up a day or a life, when you experience courage—yours or others. It is a moment of knowing amid uncertainty, when you recognize that even with the pain of this world, there is more to this life.
Joy simply has much to do with what you give, and shows up when you least expect to receive it. It is community in all the ways you contribute and are nourished in that connection.
Joy is in the tears, the cracks in the ceiling of darkness, the breath in between, the sigh of relief, a stranger's kindness, or your own generosity when no one is looking. It is the comfort of nature and the breathtaking beauty of the sky when we bother to see it. It is the everything and the nothing, the goofy and the ironic, the consequential and the trivial that produces a smile. It is the realization that you matter in all of this—just because.
In the days ahead, there will be plenty of opportunities to observe this in small human interactions and large events of history. There will also be moments within yourself that crack open your own light, despite whatever evidence the world may dole out. You have the power to receive joy and to give it away, if only you let yourself see it peeking through.
Then "when we come to it, we must confess that we are the possible. We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world. That is when, and only when we come to it.”¹
¹United Nations. (2014, May 28). Maya Angelou reading her poem “A Brave and Startling Truth” | United Nations [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjEfq7wLm7M
Additional Reading
Lanham, J.D. (2022). “Joy Is The Justice We Give Ourselves.” Emergence Magazine. https://emergencemagazine.org/poem/joy-is-the-justice-we-give-ourselves/
Popova, M. (2024). “18 Life-Learnings From 18 Years Of The Marginalian.” The Marginalian. https://www.themarginalian.org/2024/10/22/marginalian-18/