A friend asked me the other day how I find joy as a disciple
of Christ and I asked if I could think on it for a bit, to which he replied in
the affirmative and here’s my answer, in blog form. I’ve thought about joy and
feeling joy in my worship and discipleship quite a bit over the years (sparked
initially by the famed verse that “Adam fell that man might be and men are that
they might have joy” and a talk, I believe by then-Elder Nelson, about finding
joy in our keeping of the Sabbath and other commandments).
Defining joy seems like the only way to begin. Joy strikes
me as different than happiness. Not necessarily in the way we often distinguish
those two feelings (joy as divine and eternal whereas happiness, or more
frequently pleasure, is worldly and fleeting), but more in the composition of
the feeling. Joy is a more complex emotion than happiness. Joy may manifest as
a pure, ecstatic, uncontained happiness (like watching Speed Racer or seeing the Millennium
Falcon fly through Jakku in The Force
Awakens or seeing Cec after a long day at work). But joy also can be a
deeper, slower feeling of contentment. A sense that everything is just right.
The kind of quiet goodness that may be less often expressed or sought after,
but is perhaps more valuable. Joy leaves room for sorrow and devastation. It
isn’t those feelings, but it’s not chased away by them. Though perhaps above
all, joy demands to be shared, to be experienced with others, to bring others
in, to reach out and embrace. Joy demands that we commune together.
Five actions encompass the different ways that I tend to
find joy in my personal discipleship. They’re somewhat interconnected, but I think
distinct enough to go through one by one.
1. Learning
Study and learning is remarkably rewarding for me. I interact
with most things first on some sort of intellectual or conceptual level and
studying and learning definitely facilitates that. I find that to really be a
disciple of Christ I need to learn things (not necessarily know things, but the act of learning and studying in pursuit of
knowledge, however incomplete, is a pursuit that I find joyful).
Not everyone loves to study and learn, but as a naturally
quite curious person, I love to learn and discover new perspectives and insights
and find them enriching. The act of reading and re-reading and having my ideas
challenged and new twists on old stories that I’ve read countless times is
thrilling and joyful in a way that few things are. I love to learn.
2. Sharing
But as I mentioned above, joy is not content in isolation.
The joy of learning something new is doubled when it is shared. This act of
sharing helps me build a community of discipleship that collectively
strengthens me. I love to have people to share thoughts and ideas with and
sharing them enriches my own initial understanding and brings new light to me—again,
helping me learn.
Teaching is one way to facilitate this sharing and luckily,
Cec and I are Gospel Doctrine teachers in our ward. We get to share our
insights with others frequently and I love it. I love to bounce ideas back and
forth and to enlarge the perspectives of others. A couple of weeks ago, we
taught about Esther and shared that during the Jewish festival of Purim, it is
customary to boo and jeer whenever Haman is mentioned or comes on stage and I
invited the class to follow that custom during our lesson. At one point, I
mentioned Haman and a hearty chorus of boo’s rang out from the class and I
experienced true joy right then and there.
3. Feasting
Joy seeks depth—joy is a feast. Connected to learning and
sharing, I find joy in digging into and feasting on the word. I enjoy the depth
of detail associated with the idea of feasting. I like to think of the digging
into different ideas as feasting—feasting is the depth that comes after
learning, as I sit with ideas and ruminate on them, ponder, write, wrestle—all of
that is feasting for me.
I love to lose myself in the details, in the moment of
discovery—swallowing every syllable and detail. To feast is to savor. And for
me, to savor is joy.
4. Communing
Communion brings me joy. My word of the year is communion
and I detailed more in a previous post what exactly I hope to do with that. Communion
is the collision of learning, sharing, and feasting. Yet communion is more than
that—it’s a state of being. It may be temporary, and in fact often is. But
communion—with God, with the Divine, with my family, with other disciples, with
film & books—brings joy.
I feel that I can recognize the humanity of discipleship in
communion. Humanity and seeing the best of it brings my joy. I believe in the
goodness of people and communion reminds me of that belief and gives my hope
and from that hope I find joy.
5. Appreciating
The last piece of my personal discipleship that brings me
joy is somewhat of a catch-all—appreciating. I strive to appreciate all the
weirdnesses of life and the funkiness that surrounds my Mormon journey. As I was
thinking about this post, I watched Monty
Python’s Life of Brian which I find hilarious and insightful. I was struck
by the final song of the film “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life”, which
is sung as Brian and others hang on crosses. It seems to me that we can always
stop and appreciate some of what surrounds us (I know the song is somewhat or
entirely mocking some of the overly optimistic nature of believers, but ya
know).
Even if I cannot quite do or understand everything I wish to,
I can appreciate small moments of fun. Or even when I am frustrated by the
slowness or corporate nature or any other element of the community I worship
in, I can appreciate ironies or dark humor of what happens around me, laugh and
therein find some joy.
A final thought—I think there are at least two large types
of joy: the joy of possibility and discovery and the joy of accomplishment. For
me, these two types are connected to thoughts from Bruce C. Hafen’s 1979
address “Love
is Not Blind: Some Thoughts for College Students on Faith and Ambiguity.”
Hafen presents a taxonomy (that like all taxonomies is limited in its reductive
nature, but helpful as a starting place) of faith in three broad stages, based
around Hafen’s view of the world as two circles, one inside the other—the real
inside of the ideal. Stage One is individuals that see the ideal as the real—there
is no boundary between them. Stage Two individuals see only the gap between the
real and ideal. Stage Three individuals strive to stand with one foot planted
in the real and one in the ideal, to slowly but surely bring the real closer
and closer to the ideal.
Joy must be found in recognizing and successfully
identifying the gaps between the real and the ideal—there’s a comfort in that
discovery and the possibility for things to be improved and the myriad ways
that improvement may be accomplishment and the gap may be closed. Joy is also
found in the successful closing or narrowing of that gap—I feel joy of
accomplishment when I or others have worked hard to bring the real one step
closer to the ideal.
Joy is a tricky emotion, but one that I think is worth
pursuing and can bring great value to us in our pursuit of discipleship. After
all, we are that we might have joy.