In Pursuit of Joy

Joy is the one thing we all have in common.  Our philosophies, our theologies, our ideas may differ--but I suppose that everyone has experienced a moment or two of JOY, that fleeting and  indefinable moment of ecstasy that suddenly takes over us at the sight of a beautiful tree or sky, or at seeing the expression on a baby's face.  That moment (or those moments) have created in us some inexpressible longing which we want to capture and hold onto. 

Repressive governments throughout history have tried to make sure that their people do not experience joy, because that is the one thing they cannot control and manipulate.  Enlightened governments have made it their aim to preserve the right of every citizen to experience joy, without interference from those who live in darkness and whose sole aim is to destroy the joy of others.

At the Last Supper, Jesus made two promises to His disciples:  He promised them joy "that no one would take from them" and peace "not as the world gives."

In his autobiography Surprised by Joy, C.S.Lewis writes about those moments of joy that began for him at the age of six, as he gazed out the window of his nursery and saw something that he could not define but that later he was to call "the secret signature of each soul," the longing "not merely to see beauty...but to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it" (Transposition and Other Addressess, 1949).

I think it is fair to say that, unless we have become dead men through the use of drugs or alcohol or sex as control and manipulation, or power as control, or the pursuit of wealth that chokes out all other pleasures---unless we have stifled our "inner man," we have all pursued joy:

There are times when I think we do not desire heaven; but more often I find myself wondering whether in our heart of hearts, we have ever desired anything else...Are not all lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling (but faint and uncertain even at best) of that something which you were born desiring, and which, beneath the flux of other desires and in all the momentary silences between the louder passions, night by night, year by year, from childhood to old age, you are looking for, watching for, listening for?

You have never had it.  All the things tht have ever deeply possessed your soul have been hints of it---tantalizing glimpses, promised never quite fulfilled, echoes that dies away just as they caught your ear.  But if it should really become manifest---if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself---you would know it.  Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say, "Here at last is the thing I was made for." 

We cannot tell each other about it.  It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want, the thing we desired before we met our wives or made our friends, or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds, when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work.  While we are, this is.  If we lose this, we lose all.

(--from The Problem of Pain, Chapter 10)

Those who have lost the capacity for these fleeting moments of joy are dead men walking; those who are on the path to heaven find joy at every corner and in every moment.  Above my desk, I have a landscape of trees by Isack Tarkey, and beneath it a card that reads The fullness of joy is to behold God in everything.  This is the joy promised to us by Jesus, the "joy that no one can take from us."  And it does seem to follow that moment of grief when we think that everything has been taken from us. 

Maybe this is the ultimate meaning of the Resurrection---when everything we have cherished and loved is restored to us, and we are re-united with joy, never again to be removed from it, or it from us:  if you want to steal my joy, come and get it in the hands of God!