Entering into Joy
This season is full of genuine goodness and real challenges. For many of us, it's replete with to-do lists, figuring out gifts, attending practices and concerts, juggling calendar demands, parties, people, cookies, etc.! For many of us too, it's full of difficult griefs, ambivalence, isolations, feelings of being locked out, worn down, haunted by silence and dread, hounded by the frenetic merriment. You may be pulled by both directions at once; I certainly am.
Keeping to the middle place between those poles requires attending to the grounded realities of our ordinary lives, including their actual human limits, their real griefs, and staying alert for the joy even within the pain. "Keep watch! Stay awake!" are incessant drumbeats in Scripture for good reason, and they are particularly important to practice in Advent, when the tension between the poles increases. Watchfulness and wakefulness are reliable paths to joy, and joy is always worth the effort it requires.
I've made a short list of things that are bringing me joy today. I hope you'll give yourself the gift of writing yourself a short "joy list" too. Just try it (be an essayist! French: essayer = to try), and see what happens.
I saw bluebirds flashing around in their blue jackets and rust-colored vests on my morning walk today. It reminded me of dear Sister Barbara Ann at the All Saints Convent in Catonsville and her fabulous book, Beakless Bluebirds and Featherless Penguins (Scriptorium Press, 1990), and give thanks for her life and creative and fruitful labors in this world.
While vacuuming, I listened to a podcast episode I came across recently that's all about creativity. Andy J. Pizza has been chugging out the Creative Pep Talk podcast for eight long years, and I only just came across it. I highly commend to you and creative people you know and love: "How to Make Work That's More Creative and Less of a Grind." I'm noodling on how to apply some of these principles in all aspects of my life, even in my dissertation writing.
It was a treat to participate Tuesday night in Comment magazine's Advent series on W. H. Auden's "For the Time Being" poem/Christmas Oratorio. I hope you'll join in on the next installments. It's been a great gift to meditate on poetry in this season, and take it up again. (If you are interested in some good Advent poems, check out The Advent Project. And while you are at it, subscribe to Comment. It is a gorgeous and thoughtful magazine.)
My friend Jen's latest book In Good Time is set to release in less than two weeks. (Not too late to pre-order and get her pre-order bonuses!) Jen's friendship is precious to me. She is such a faithful writer, and her disciplined approach to faith and habits, desires and disciplines, brings me great joy and true inspiration.
Electricity and warm showers. We lost power last night, and the hour or so of darkness and de-electrified silence that settled on our neighborhood woke me up to things I so often take for granted: simple, significant things like hot ovens, flushing toilets, lights in the darkness, indoor warmth on cold outdoor days.
People who help me move with courage and hope into life's tension and pain, and who model how to do it well in their own life.
Peace, joy, courage, and hope to you today, and in this season. xx