The Hopes and Fears of All the Years: Day 18

Joy is not a Crumb

“Joy is not made to be a crumb.” - Mary Oliver, Don’t Hesitate

Text: Luke 2:8-20

Do you ever feel guilty about feeling joy? Especially in light of the suffering and pain of the world, how can we possibly feel good about experiencing joy when the everything is, well, a mess?

Enter the brilliance of the poet Mary Oliver. In her poem Don’t Hesitate she both names this pervasive sense of guilt we can feel over experiencing joy, and calls us to embrace the gift of joy when it comes to us. She writes,

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be…

But wait, isn’t that why we should suppress our joy? Not so fast. Later in the poem she connects the experience of joy to a kind of resistance.

…Still life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happened better than all the riches or power in the world…

This idea of joy as a kind of resistance can be found right in the middle of the Christmas stories. The angels appear to some shepherds and announce good news of great joy—complete with an enthusiastic, celebratory song—in the middle of the night, and more importantly, in the context of the Roman oppression of the people of Judea. The angels nor the shepherds hedged or muted their joy. The angels filled the night sky with song, and the shepherds returned from visiting the Holy Family joyfully praising God for the experience.

Joy is a way of resisting the cynicism, despair, and resignation that the powers that be count on to limit our capacity to push back against their plans to carve up the world unjustly. And, according to Mary Oliver, joy is not to be feared or avoided, but taken in and embraced with both arms:

“…whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.”

Reflection:
When is the last time you felt joy?
Have you ever felt guilty about feeling joy?
How can experiencing joy be an act of faithful resistance in your life?