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Hi, I'm Sophy ~ your editor for this edition of the Spiritual Newsletter. This week we'll talk about cultivating joy.
The Rev. Scotty McLennan, author of the book Finding Your Religion, compares humanity's innate need for spiritual searching to climbing a mountain. In his view, we are all endeavoring to climb the same figurative mountain in our search for the divine, we just may take different ways to get there. In other words, there is one "God," but many paths. I honor whatever path or paths you have chosen to climb that mountain in your quest for the Sacred. 
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Where's the Joy?
A merry heart does like good medicine,
but a downcast spirit dries up the bones.
Proverbs 17:22
Joy is an essential spiritual practice that grows out of faith, grace, gratitude, hope, and love. It is defined as the pure and simple delight of being alive, as an elated response to feelings of happiness, experiences of pleasure, and an awareness of abundance. It can also stem from the deep satisfaction we experience when we are able to serve others and be happy for their good fortune. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, joy is mentioned over 250 times in the Bible while sorrow and sadness appear less than 50 times. Paul made it clear that joy is one of the fruits of the Spirit, and from John’s gospel we are told that one of Jesus’ hopes for us was that joy would dwell within us. Within the Buddhist tradition joy is one of the "Four Immeasurables," which include loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity, virtues which followers can cultivate endlessly, without limits, as good qualities for any Buddhist to possess in good measure.
In addition to these spiritual foundations, joy is good for us physically. The writer of Proverbs, who said in chapter 15, verse 30, "A cheerful look brings joy to the heart, and good news gives health to the bones,” knew more than 3000 years ago what we have discovered fairly recently through scientific investigations in the area of psychoneuroimmunology, which informs us that angry and depressed people have weakened immune systems, while joy and humor strengthen your immune system and are good for your health. And yet, even with references as good as these, and with scientific proof that joy is good for our health – for many of us, myself included, joy is often the most difficult emotion for us to embrace for a variety of reasons in our post-modern western world.
Perhaps one of the reasons joy can be so elusive is because most of us can find hundreds of reasons on any given day NOT to be joyful, and so we find that we cannot immerse ourselves in joy even for a brief time. We can be content at times, sure, and maybe even experience a short-lived bout of happiness. But joy – that’s much more difficult for some of us to achieve because there is so much going on around us NOT to be joyful about. Just turn on the news or get a distressing phone call from a friend, and any spark of joy we might have had is immediately extinguished. The economy is bad, we are worried about job security, healthcare needs to be reformed, we are concerned about a family member or friend who is seriously ill, we are angry about the rampant injustice in our world. In other words, on any given day there are a variety of things going on in our personal lives as well as around the rest of the world that suck any joy right out of us. And when we DO have even a fleeting experience of joy, oftentimes we don’t allow it to stick around for very long because we feel guilty about it – perhaps because we think it’s wrong to be joyful while so many others are suffering, or because we recall something we are concerned about which pushes the joy to the back of the emotion line once again.
Another reason some of us may struggle with experiencing and holding on to joy is because we do care so deeply about the injustices of the world. And so, because there is so much wrong in our world we become understandably angry about it. The good news is that our righteous anger can fuel our passion and energize us to fight to bring about an end to injustice. But the bad news is if the anger is the only emotion we experience – if we become so focused on what’s wrong in the world that we become incapable of feeling joy – that does no one any good – not us, not the people we are trying to help. The truth is that joy is contagious, joy is persuasive – when we are around joyful people some of their joy tends to rub off on us. And if we are joyful our joy can rub off on others. On the other hand, while anger is also certainly contagious, nothing is less persuasive than walking about angry all the time. Because oftentimes when we are striving for righteous indignation all we end up with self-righteousness and the two are nothing alike, and self-righteousness gets nothing accomplished.
So how do we find a way to seek justice and be joyful? Frederick Buechner says that, “The world is full of suffering indeed, and to turn our backs on it is to work a terrible unkindness maybe almost more on ourselves than on the world. But life indeed is also to be enjoyed. I suggest that may even be the whole point of it.” In other words yes, there is much to be angry about, much for us to try and remedy to bring about a just world – but there is also much for us to be joyful about, to be grateful for. And if we only focus on the anger we miss out on the joy.
One place we might get some help in terms of cultivating joy comes from our Buddhist brothers and sisters, who I mentioned earlier in terms of the “four immeasurables. The third immeasurable is called sympathetic joy, which is defined as rejoicing in the happiness and good fortune of others. So, according to Buddhists, one way to cultivate joy in our own lives, especially if we are having a tough time feeling joy for ourselves, is to be authentically joyful when something good happens to someone else. When a good friend gets a promotion at work, even though we may be worried about our own job, be happy for them. When a family member gets pregnant while we've been struggling to conceive, find a way to truly feel joy for them.
Another place we can cultivate joy is from our own writing -- try keeping a "joy" journal by finding something every day to be joyful about. It can be small or large, what it is doesn't matter. We feel joy for a beautiful sunset, or in the laughter of a friend. What does matter is intentionally working to find something to be joyful about each day, and writing about it. The exercise of doing the actual writing can actually bring about the emotion itself -- give it a try!
Sophy |
Below you'll find some offerings from other WDC members about joy. Please let the folks know if you read their piece by leaving a thoughtful comment or review.
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One of my first poems if you can call it that, written when in 12th grade many years ago.
#1408150 by JScott Todd  |
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A few from "The Writer's Cramp - Poetry Week" about finding joy in the midst of difficulty:
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Now for a few comments about my last newsletter about the Charter for Compassion:
From Lauriemariepea
hi, sophy--
your friendly community atheist here. loved the notes on compassion! i'm all for it. i wish people everywhere remembered more often how important it is. 
just a quick comment on the newsletter: please remember compassion isn't limited to those who have a spiritual faith. in fact, i'd hold dear someone who expressed and lived compassionately regardless of how they came to their ideals. you're an open-minded person; i know this. please don't leave out those of us who find their faith in humanity rather than through a spiritual practice. thank you! 
You are exactly right, thank you for bringing it up -- of course compasison is expressed and experienced by all people, not just those with a spiritual faith. I'm glad you find faith in humanity!
    
From Katya the Poet 
Yay for the compassion charter and this compassion newsletter!
YAY indeed -- make sure you check it out -- it was just released last week:
http://charterforcompassion.org/
From sarahreed
I believe that religion should be a guide to help you be a better person and to treat others with respect and compassion. It's how I was raised. I always cringe at religious types who scorn or ignore others because they believe in something else, a different divine. We are all human and we should treat each other equally, with kindness and helpfullness. Well, that's my opinion anyway and how I'm going to live my life.
Amen -- very well said, and thank you for sharing.
From njames51 
COMPASSION. One rarely hears this word in conversation, rarely sees the word written; and quite rarely views it in "action". A man who FEELS compassion will have experienced the feeling of EMPATHY. To have "empathy" for his fellow man is to have "compassion" for that man. They are both,in a sense, "having walked in that man's shoes" if only in an imaginary way.
Once a person is struck by empathy, he also is enveloped by compassion. THEN, there is no turning back. For, empathy and compassion require an ACTION step. There is no looking away.
There is no 'well, that's their problem, not mine'. Compassion is the finest of God's gifts to mankind. Whether each man will ever tap into, discover, acknowledge he has Compassion, is the question. A compassionate man can never do murder, nor defraud a stranger, nor walk by when violence occurs. For EMPATHY and COMPASSION denote that one's spiritual life is working forefront, it is active, and God has a hold of one's heart.
Thanks for sharing your wise words about compassion.
Please keep your comments and suggestions coming, they are greatly appreciated!
Until next time! Sophy
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Spiritual: November 18, 2009 Issue [#3393]
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