Is Joy Possible?

On a spiritual retreat last week, I expected to be inspired by the speaker. While I was not disappointed, the two moments that made the deepest impression on me over the weekend were spontaneous comments that, in retrospect, I believe I needed to hear.

The first came from Mother Hilary, a nun, who shared that she was pondering a bumper sticker that she’d seen recently. The bumper sticker, “If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention,” is one that I suppose most of us have seen. Mother Hilary is a thoughtful person, someone who looks at life from a different and always refreshing new perspective, and so I was interested in her reflections.

Her comments were simple but profound. Are the only two options in our currently divided nation and world to be outraged or not paying attention? Certainly, being outraged is one of the few commonalities between the politically right and left. Both sides are outraged, differing only on what they are outraged about.

It was typical of Mother Hilary to invite us to ponder what alternatives there might be to outrage and not paying attention without supplying any answer.

Later, I had dinner with the speaker for the retreat, Ronald Norton, a British theologian with a specialty in the medieval saint Julian of Norwich. When he found out that I’d written a book on monastic responses to 9/11, he said that he was convinced that 9/11 had not changed just the US, but the world as a whole. He added the terrorist bombings in London, referred to as 7/7, as Britain’s own 9/11 experience.

One of Ronald’s reflections on those two horrendous events is similar to mine, that the current anger in this country and Britain, the outrage, stems back to 9/11 and 7/7. Anyone passing our table and hearing his description of the current anger in Britain as it faces its own general election could have thought he was talking about our country.

But he took the discussion a step further. Looking up at me, he said, “What’s been lost around the world after 9/11 and 7/7 is the capacity for joy.” He said it with great sadness, and neither of us commented further for a moment.

If we are those of the political right and left who are outraged, we might be tempted to say that anyone feeling joy must not be paying attention. But what Mother Hilary and Ronald Norton mean by joy is not apathy at all. Joy is as far from apathy as it is from outrage.

So what would joy look like in this outraged and apathetic world? I am still asking myself that question, and the question is proving difficult to answer.

What I have grasped so far is that being outraged and being apathetic both describe how I am thinking about the future. If outrage is my consuming emotion, then I am fretting over, even obsessed with, where our country and the world seem to be headed. If I am apathetic, then I am looking at the same uncertain future and responding with “I don’t care—just pass me a beer and let me watch the next sporting event.” But it takes a lot of energy, a lot of distractions, to not think about a troubled future.

Both outrage and apathy as dominant mindsets rob us of the present moment, this day, this moment. We can’t “consider the lilies;” in fact, we don’t even notice the lilies, the birds singing outside our windows, or the smile on the face of someone we pass in the grocery store. Our minds are elsewhere.

Whatever joy is, it can’t be some emotion we try to force ourselves to feel. And I don’t believe joy is the same as happiness. Joy is something deeper, a reality present all the time, something hidden within this very moment.

The challenge, then, is to show up for this moment, the only moment we can ever live.