Tag: joy

Finding Joy

What brings you Joy?   During this long Pandemic Time have you noticed any change in what Joy means to you or how you experience it?

I am not referring to Happiness.  Joy, I think, is different from happiness . . . Joy arises from a much deeper, more enduring place in us than happiness. Joy feels more substantial, restores hope, brings encouragement.  With Joy, life goes from gray to vibrant color.  Happiness seems less substantial, more flashy and fleeting — like a quick glimpse of a hummingbird as it flits away from one flower emptied of nectar in search of another.

Contentment is closer to Joy.  Contentment seems longer lasting and more mellow than Happiness — like savoring a bite of Godiva dark chocolate.  Bitter on the tongue yet sweet, noticing the way the flavor morphs as it moves across your tastebuds from front to back, the smooth texture melting into chocolaty richness.  That to me is contentment – full sensory awareness and relishing of the whole experience.

Joy?  For me, Joy often comes with connection.  The connection can be time spent with friends or family or connection through remembering times together. Or perhaps connection is an “aha” moment when events or thoughts seem to click together like puzzle pieces in a coherent pattern that I hadn’t seen before. I find deep Joy in seeing a child with its mother and remember times with my daughter at that age.  I feel Joy when I am piecing a quilt project and am surrounded by the bright color and prints that will eventually make patterns to be enjoyed by another. In piecing I pair colors with each other in unique ways that spark Joy in me.

When I drive home from my sister’s house after we have spent an afternoon together doing a puzzle or just talking and feeling close, I often feel both Joy and a bittersweet longing for more time.  What I’ve just experienced in my visit with Karen connects me with warm memories of other times together.  Joy brings recognition of the gift of being alive together and gratitude for having a sister who knows me and loves me still. 

I am filled with warmth when Joy comes.   Often without being aware of it I’m smiling. Usually I am energized – not quite turning handsprings at this age but close to it. Sometimes Joy fills me with a peace that calms and softens the rough edges of a chaotic day.

Joy lights up what was grey and unremarkable . . . and often highlights what is just emerging.  Remarkably to me, Joy can co-exist with tears and grief, lending a lightness that doesn’t mask the sadness but allows gratitude and memory to rise. Joy seems ephemeral as it floats in and out of our lives but it is also durable — remaining a warm memory for weeks or longer.  It can sometimes be beckoned to appear, but may just as likely choose to ignore our call to it.  It usually appears suddenly and unexpectedly. And that makes me treasure even more the times Joy surprises.

I could say I am greedy for Joy. But I know that I cannot cage it or staple it to my sleeve in order to keep it. Joy is precious to me because I know that it can’t be held or caged or tied down.  Joy surprises me when it comes and is missed when it is gone.  Surprise seems to be part of Joy.

The Pandemic, as difficult as it has been to live with, has not been joyless. 

  • Joy surprised me with the connections Zoom and Facetime brought to add a touch of companionship to my isolation.
  • Joy surprised me with my love of color and sewing. I hadn’t seen sewing as play until the Pandemic.  I made all my Christmas gifts two years in a row!  I haven’t done that since I graduated with my PhD in 1994!
  • Joy surprised me with a renewed love of chopping vegetables and making soup and simple meals.  Before the Pandemic I was still working (too much) and felt cooking intruded on other things I wanted or needed to do.  Now, evening is a time when I switch from whatever else I’ve been doing to a slower pace when I can enjoy the colors and textures of what I am chopping and cooking.
  • Joy surprised me with the elation at seeing and being with my sibs and friends in person.  I didn’t think I particularly needed people – but now I can’t perpetuate that lie.  I long every day to see someone and try to plan regular times to meet – on Zoom if COVID is particularly nasty but preferably in person.

These are not the only times Joy has visited me, but enough for now.  When has Joy come to you?

With love (and joy),

Jane

Airplane — 38 years ago

I just read a post on my Facebook stream that Airplane (the movie) was released 38 years ago.  What memories that brought back.  Bittersweet and yet not sad.

Thirty-eight years ago, my then husband Ken Williams and I had fled to the shore to spend a long weekend in Ocean City at a borrowed house belonging to friends who wanted to offer us a bit of comfort after a huge shock.  I had sat in a doctor’s office with Ken just 3 days before and heard what no one wants or expects to hear . . . a diagnosis of late stage cancer.  It was called non-Hodgkins lymphoma — a cancer that these days is serious but considered more of a chronic condition than a terminal one.  But in those days, there were far fewer effective treatments and the doc struggled to tell us that Ken might have 3 months to live and would need to begin treatment in the hospital immediately.

We bargained with the doc (and, I suppose, with fate) and asked for one week of reprieve.  We had been married just over one year, and were trying to get pregnant, but treatment (if Ken survived) would make him infertile.  The doc said one week would not make a difference, but  to be sure it wasn’t longer.

So, we ended up in Ocean City.  Our time together was not only to try (futilely, it turned out) to get pregnant, but also to savor our last few days together before entering the world of chemo, radiation, and hospitals.  It was time tinged with knowledge of what we were facing, but holding each other, not letting go of each other’s hands as we walked, trying to hide tears from each other — all this was important and, in a sense, offering whatever balm was possible at such times.

So the second night we were at Ocean City we walked the boardwalk, one of Ken’s favorite things.  We passed the lone theater which was advertising Airplane.  It had been overcast all day — that grey sky dark with ominous heavy curtains of clouds just waiting to drop their payload of rain.  As we passed the marquee, the sky opened and rain fell with ferocity.   We stood under the marquee, then I suggested maybe seeing this movie — I had not seen ads for it and had no idea what it was.  I just wanted a distraction.

What a wonderful serendipitous opportunity it was.  We sat in the theater, almost the only patrons, and laughted until tears came.  These were not the tears of sadness, though, but of unbridled laughter.  For 90 minutes, our fears and grief were lightened and less present as we watched the screen.

At the end of 5 days, we returned to our home in Mt. Pocono and Ken entered St. Luke’s Hospital in Bethlehem — a 50 minute ride from home and the closest cancer treatment center at the time.  But our time in Ocean City was marked by that movie — we found we could laugh and find joy even in the midst of tragedy and threat.  That experience has never been forgotten.  Thirty-eight years ago today . . . like it was yesterday.

Jane+

Bliss

I have loved teaching.  I taught in a graduate counseling program that was lodged in a progressive Christian seminary.  By progressive I mean that this seminary was one of the few I know of that is Christian in tradition and that is open (radically open, some would say) to those of a variety of spiritual paths (and no path as well).  The inclusiveness of this seminary is in large part due to two programs and degrees/certificates.  One is a masters degree program in clinical counseling (the one I taught in) that sought to integrate spiritual awareness and psychological counseling skills.  The second is a broad set of programs that offered certificates in spiritual direction and formative spirituality.  The work that we did in teaching, supervising, and mentoring students in both of these programs was sacred.  Students often are drawn to a seminary for study in theology, ministry, chaplaincy.  But few seminaries offer programs in spiritual formation (duh?  why not? but ’tis the truth).  And no one I know looks for a counseling degree leading to licensure in a theological seminary.  So it was always a struggle to get enough students  and our classes were small.

But what occurred in those cohorts was sacred, mystical, transformative.
We graduated Muslim students, Buddhist followers, a Hindu priest, and many flavors of Christian.  Some of our students had not been in church since childhood.  The programs, however, renewed a quest in our students and many returned to their spiritual roots or found other paths that nurtured them in more fulfilling ways.  Throughout the program, students began to change the lenses with which they saw mental illness or life challenges.  They began to see how depression, loss, joy, illness were not just diagnosable using the DSM5, but were also spiritual problems.  They began to see more deeply into patients/clients, and into themselves as well.  They began to attune to the emotions of their patients/clients, and use their own feelings as potential cues to what was happening inside the Other (what is called countertransference in psychodynamic therapy).

I had not expected to write about my teaching or the program I taught in — just to say that I loved seeing the changes in students and felt that in answering God’s call to this work that I was walking the path to which I had been called.

I am now beginning retirement and am starting to experience a blissful feeling of freedom.  For although I truly loved what I did, I am now realizing the burden I carried with me constantly.  .  .the burden of always knowing there was something I could be doing to stay on top of teaching, grading, mentoring.  I have let go of this burden, and it is an experience of feeling lighter, more confident that what comes next is something that I can handle or survive, that I can dwell in a place of delight in being present to experiences without having to pull away and check the to do list of class prep or reading.

I know this won’t last forever and that there will be blips and bunders, but for now . . . bliss it is!