JOY

On the unexpected delight of intercessory joy ...

One of the special thrills of algorithm writers for social media must be that special inclination to make sure that someone else’s new job announcement always rises to the top of your feed on the same morning when you’ve received yet another rejection email.

Or the algorithm that ensures that your top post, after breaking up with your significant other, is a photo of that person seemingly in rapturous love, having the time of their lives with another beautiful somebody.

It is so easy to use another person’s seeming joy, for the purpose of tormenting ourselves.

What is another’s joy, after all, except yet another reason to lament your own monotonous existence? That fabulous beach vacation. The lovely smiling family cutting down a Christmas tree. Finishing a workout, beaming into the camera.

This is what the world does to our joy. It cheapens it. Makes it seem purchase-able. And self-possessed, only able to be stared at from afar.

It would be easy to suggest that this phenomenon of joy and resentment was hastened with social media, but I think to covet it is to be human, which is why “not coveting” encompasses two of the original 10 Commandments given to Moses on Mount Sinai, thousands of years before Mark Zuckerberg conjured Facebook.

Still, I write to you today in the third week of Advent - and in this week we are to light a third candle in honor of JOY. Be joyful, goldarnit. Joy is here. It matters. It’s important, no less than hope, peace, or even love.

The secret to lasting joy is really quite simple. It’s meant to be shared. No, not “shared” in online photos - but shared together. Joy is not individual but communal. Delight, if we let it be, is contagious. You have to take a moment to forget yourself and put yourself in the place of another. From this start comes compassion, empathy, understanding, peace - and yes, often unexpected joy.

Like the first two weeks of Advent, like hope and peace, it’s important that we acknowledge that joy is not something we earn or buy. Joy is not something we deserve, except in the sense that everyone deserves it, because God gives it to everyone by virtue of being human.

I keep thinking here of the Yiddish word באַשערט, pronounced bashert, meaning destiny, or meant to be. The Jewish Chronicle suggests the most likely etymology of this word comes from the German beschert, which means “given,” or “divine gifts, according to folklore.”

What does this all have to do with JOY? The Promise of Advent is that hope, peace, joy, and love are our destiny. They are gifts we’ve been given by God. We receive them when we open our hearts, and open ourselves to share in one another’s joy. This means receiving joy without considering another’s joy as a slight to ourselves. Then, joy becomes destiny.

I remember a specific time and place where I consciously chose to participate in intercessory joy rather than wallow in my own resulting feelings of inadequacy or jealousy.

It was more than a decade ago. I was living in Southwest Florida, working as a sportswriter. I had just endured yet another rough break-up with my college boyfriend, Ben (who is now my husband, but we’ll save that story for another day). I was lonely and alone, spending my days watching hockey practices as a beat reporter, and my nights driving for hours to the opposite ends of Lee and Collier counties, trying desperately to make friends and find community.

My phone rang, in the two-bedroom townhome in a retirement community that I shared with a roommate who I rarely spoke to, and I saw it was my best friend from college. Her voice was a little breathless and excited: “Angie … I’m engaged! (Her boyfriend) asked me to marry him!"

I remember pausing for like a split second in my mind. I’m pretty sure my eyes were still red and raw at that moment from crying over my break-up. But surprisingly, all I felt in my heart was pure, unadulterated joy. I was so happy for her. We had started dating our boyfriends around the same time, and her now-fiancee was a great guy. He was kind. He loved her deeply. He was honest. Smart. Hard-working. Devoted. Easy to talk to. Nice to her friends. Good to his family.

I was surprised, a little bit, at how easy it was to be happy for someone who was getting the one thing I’d wanted now for years in my own relationship. We had this fun conversation about wedding plans and details and the minutiae of the proposal and, so much more. It was genuinely fun. I felt so excited.

I hung up the phone that night, alone again in my room, and I waited for the resentment, sadness, and jealousy to come - like they had so many times in the past and would again. But at least this time, hope, peace, joy, and love won out. All I felt was joy. It was exciting. My best friend was getting married to a wonderful guy. I was one of the first phone calls she’d made, even though we were separated by hundreds of miles now. Joy was easier than I’d expected it to be. It was right there: I only had to open my heart to share it with the people all around me, instead of thinking their wins were my losses.

Intercessory joy might seem like a rare thing in a world where economics force us to play a zero-sum game. I win; you lose. You win; I lose. But if you look a little closer, intercessory joy is there all the time. I saw it in the faces of parents and caregivers as we watched our fourth graders in a musical performance at the elementary school last week. I saw it in shy kids so proud to share what they’d learned. I saw it in an elderly woman whose bones had healed, they told her, like a woman 40 years her junior. I heard it in the imperfect notes of a carol, warbling out over a world teeming with joy, just under the surface of our competitive facade.

A Few Notes …

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