Column Joy abounds and puppies know where
By JEANNETTE BATZ
My husband is not prone to joy. He
does not leap into the air at good news, gurgle with delight over a sunrise,
babble his exuberance over life. Neither, come to think of it, does my
mother.
Dented by childhood's slings and arrows until they learned to
expect the worst, both are exquisitely sensitive. They nod sagely when the
worst does indeed come to bear. And when something good happens instead, their
surprise prompts more wariness than gratitude.
I, on the other hand, am a biochemical bundle of joie de vivre.
Happiness comes easily to me, as do awe and thanks. Songs like "Shout from the
Highest Mountain" and "Praise to the Lord" spring, blithely off-key, from my
lips.
In deference to others, I've learned to tone it down. Too often
joy comes across as a goading, an expectation that the other arrive quickly at
the same state. At times it seems just plain silly or a dangerous delusion that
the world is a good place and defenses can be dropped. It can drive someone
with less serotonin crazy.
My first hint at what solemn folk must feel when people gurgle
with joy came after I copied out a fragment of Rabindranath Tagore's
Gitanjali: "Let all the strains of joy mingle in my last song -- the joy
that makes the earth flow over in the riotous excess of the grass, the joy that
sets the twin brothers, life and death, dancing over the wide world, the joy
that sweeps in with the tempest, shaking and waking all life with laughter."
That makes even me nervous.
I draw more comfort from William James' solemn attempts to
reconcile the psychological experience of joy with the religious one.
The new Catholic catechism is way too confusing: First, we learn
that joy comes from "utter dependence with respect to the Creator." Then that
joy is one of "the fruits of charity." Then that joy is one of the 12 fruits of
the Holy Spirit. After that, the references to joy grind to a halt.
Just beyond the catechism on the walnut shelves of the Barnes
& Noble bookstore in St. Louis sits Matthew Kelly's new book, A Call to
Joy: Making Life a Spiritual Adventure. Eager for insights from somebody
who's still alive, I ask to interview him. Granted, Kelly says God spoke to him
three years ago through his Walkman, an experience I find somewhat alarming.
Still, I find myself engaged by his slow-to-warm-up Australian independence,
intense energy and deep convictions.
"We all desire joy," he begins, "but we don't think to ourselves
that we desire joy." We'd rather own things. It's easier and they pile up in
pleasing proof of our worthiness. "In the spiritual realm, you are a part of
something more, and you tap into an enormous energy. When material gain is our
focus, our focus becomes lack: all the things we don't have, all the things we
can't do and all the things we are not."
Happiness, Kelly tells me, comes from abundance. But we live in
the middle of abundance and ignore it, focusing always on what we don't
have.
"Now joy, joy is very different," he remarks. "Joy is not a simple
emotion. It's a state of becoming, it's about growing, changing, it's the
byproduct of that struggle. It requires change."
Uh-oh. Until now, I've defined joy, to myself at least, as
timelessness, a state of being rather than becoming, a flash of transcendence
in which no clock ticks, no mortal judges, no struggle need be exerted. I am
enough at such moments, and it is enough to be.
Psychologists call this sort of euphoria "flow" and emphasize its
purity. In his book Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman notes that
"the spontaneous pleasure, grace and effectiveness that characterize flow are
incompatible with emotional hijackings, in which limbic surges capture the rest
of the brain. The quality of attention in flow is relaxed yet highly focused.
It is a concentration very different from straining."
Even C.S. Lewis, that sober, earnest Brit, wrote confidently, "No
soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it." But Kelly
dangles joy from the highest branches arching over the path of Christian
salvation. He keeps using the verb "struggle." The only bright spot I can
discern is his assurance that "joy cannot be taken away by someone else."
Even that sours when he explains, "You are still the master of
that joy. You decide to have it or lose it."
Master? Decide? The times joy slides over me, I'm master of
nothing. Bliss needs no power or title, no decisive instruction.
"I've -- er -- always thought of joy as more of a timeless state,"
I venture to Kelly. "A euphoria that's -- well, effortless."
"It's timeless in the sense that certain emotions come with it,"
he replies obscurely, "but it is very much in time, in the sense that you must
be ever-aware of that struggle."
I'm starting to feel tired. Also a bit frivolous, a dilettante
who's missed the point. Shoulders slumped, I ponder the path to Christian
salvation. Suddenly I remember that, in other writings, C.S. Lewis defined joy
as sehnsucht, an intense romantic longing that can never be fulfilled.
Because "the human soul was made to enjoy some object that is never fully
given."
Okay, so there is an element of striving. Complete with the
paradox that striving does no good. We find joy by relaxing into the present,
whether by a hormonal rush of euphoria, a humble acceptance of our complete
dependence on God, a sincere and constant struggle to be good or the riotous
excess of the grass.
A month later, I watch our new puppy bounce in the clover and roll
in that riotous excess, bopping the purple chive flower buttons with her
slightly-smaller button nose. Sophie's near-vertical leap of joy at the sight
of a stranger willing to pet her -- or a lawn sprinkler, or a big pile of mulch
-- are purely pagan. They have not a whit to do with the Christian path of
salvation. The only struggle involved is keeping her four oversize paws on the
ground when white-trousered friends approach.
Yet in these flurries of paw and tongue, I detect the simplest
possible bridge to joy: appreciation. Sophie sniffs and nudges every possible
corner of the world around her, and when something meshes with instincts
created deep inside her, she seizes hold of it. She enjoys, engages,
participates -- whatever anthropomorphic verb you'll let me use. She is aware
and receptive. She even seems grateful.
The next crystal sunny day, when she plops down under a tree and
refuses to budge, I relax the leash and sit down on the grass next to her.
Matthew Kelly would probably agree with C.S. Lewis: "Joy is the
serious business of Heaven."
But the Father's house has many rooms and many paths approach
it.
Jeannette Batz is a senior editor at The Riverfront Times,
an alternative newspaper in St. Louis.
National Catholic Reporter, July 4,
1997
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