Joy has been in short supply lately. It fled even as an aspiration, as I inhabit the pit of sorrow and grief. I write this on what would have been Leanne’s 80th birthday, eleven weeks after a stroke took her.
In the six decades we knew each other I knew lots of joy and some melancholy too, but that wasn’t her fault. My psyche.
But now? Sam Atwood set me to reflecting on joy when he opened a recent Claremont Presbyterian Church Friday @ 8 meditation with a poem by Barbara Holmes.
Joy Unspeakable
erupts when you least expect it,
when the burden is greatest,
when the hope is gone
after bullets fly.
It rises
on the crest of impossibility,
it sways to the rhythm
of steadfast hearts,
and celebrates
what we cannot see.
Now, even now, I know that steadfast souls are with me celebrating what I cannot see. As Holmes’ writes, we are on a journey to the center of our hearts.
I know that there is supposed to be unspeakable joy somewhere in there, but first, I’d like God to deliver me from the Pit of Despair. There is a blessing in there somewhere, I am told, but the pit is dark and formless, except for its slippery sides.
In her book The Cure for Sorrow, Jan Richardson, writes that “It’s Hard to be Wedded to the Dead”:
They will safeguard your sorrow but will not permit that it should become your new country, your home.
They knew you first in joy,
In delight and though they will be patient when you travel by other roads,
It is hear that they will wait for you,
Hear that they can best be found,
Where the river runs deep with gladness,
The water over each stone singing your unforgotten name.
I think the next test of my faith is to believe that joy will emerge, unbounded and unannounced.
++++++++++++++++
Jan Richardson, The Cure for Sorrow: A book of blessings for times of grief. (Wanton Gospeller Press, 2016, 2020) 37-38.
Barbara A. Holmes, Joy Unspeakable: Contemplative Practices of the Black Church, 2nd ed. (Fortress Press: 2017), 200.
Holmes poem was included in the daily meditation by Richard Rohr for February 12, 2021.
https://cac.org/awe-and-joy-2021-02-12/
Photo: CTK, Norway, 2010