I’m married to a serotonin machine.

Today’s reflection is on joy.  And I want to tell you about Kathy.  I noticed recently that when we are walking together, I find people smiling at me.  On sidewalks, in stores, in church, I find this happening again and again.  When I first realized it, I turned to Kathy to mention it to her, and I found the reason: Kathy was smiling at them, and they were smiling at her, and then at me.  It’s like that situation where person A waves to person B, but person C thinks that person A waved to them, so they wave back at person A, and person D thinks person C was waving at them, so they wave back, and so on.  Pretty soon everybody’s waving, and none of them know each other.  It’s like that with Kathy.  Go someplace with her and pretty soon everybody’s smiling, as if they know each other, glad to see each other.

I saw raindrops on the river;

Joy is like the rain

Bit by bit the river grows

Till all at once it overflows

Joy is like the rain. 

In college, before I’d met Kathy, I heard this song, and it has stuck with me.  I comes back to me now, as I consider Joy as the second in our list of way of being aware of the Spirit in us, that Spirit that Christians call the Holy Spirit, that Spirit that is called by countless other names by people of countless religions or none, that Spirit that sleeps in us if we suffocate it, but does not die, that rises in us and gives us life when we let it, that smiles and waves and dances every chance it gets. 

In Detroit, among Kathy’s closest and most persistent friends were the other women from our old Prayer Group.  The “Fruits” and the “Gifts” of the Holy Spirit were significant to them, because of their having been brought together decades, children, and grandchildren ago, at those Charismatic Renewal prayer meetings.  A few years ago, Kathy was with a group of them, and their attention turned to her.  They told her that her gift was Joy.  

Tears come to my eyes as I type this, because even as much smiling and waving and dancing as Kathy does, her Joy does not come from a painless life.

I saw raindrops on my window;

Joy is like the rain.

Laughter runs across my pain

Slips away and comes again,

 Joy is like the rain.

I saw clouds upon a mountain;

Joy is like the cloud.

Sometimes silver sometimes grey,

Always sun not far away

Joy is like the cloud.

The lightness of Joy we’re considering is not the absence of gravity in life.  Einstein once said simplicity itself is worthless, but that the simplicity on the other side of complexity, beyond complexity – that’s worth everything. In Letters of C.S. Lewis the author writes "All joy...emphasizes our pilgrim status; always reminds, beckons, awakens desire. Our best havings are wantings."

Joy is the art of living among our wantings, not being suffocated by them but knowing that those wantings are sparks sent off by something that we hold inside, longings that speak of what we already hold deep within us, like the bright songs of whales – coming from a place that we might mistake as silent and dark.

 FreeLemonadeStand by John J. Daniels is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.