Great Joy

“Repeat the sounding joy, repeat the spending joy

Repeat, repeat, the sounding joy”

I was thinking this week of that well-loved carol, “Joy to the World” and in particular the refrain at the end of the verse 2 where nature is called upon to ‘repeat the sounding joy’.

I think that joy is missing in a large part from my Christmas preparations. As Christas Day draws ever nearer, the list of things that ‘need’ to be done grows longer instead of shorter. Tempers are short as we try to fit too many things into too short a time, worried that we won’t get it all done. The Christmas cards might not be delivered by the post office in a timely manner, especially with the rotating postal strikes that have been ongoing all fall! Did I choose the right Christmas gift for everyone? Did I spend too much on that gift … or maybe not enough? Will everything be perfect on Christmas Day? Then I have the memory of my childhood when my mother would wash the kitchen floor on Christmas, crying, because she was so tired. Not much joy in any of this!!

And yet one of the candles in the Advent wreath is lit for Joy. Joy is also a part of the carols that we sing and the scripture that we read which says in the vernacular if the King James Bible, "Fear not: for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people." So what or where is this Joy that I’m missing this time of year? How can I begin to capture some of it?

First of all I don’t think the joy that is being spoken about is necessarily a happy/‘clappy’ sort of joy. But rather a deeper joy that is at the root of all that you do no matter how you are feeling at the moment. It is that ability to find joy in the most unlikely places, at the most unlikely times, to have that joy as the bedrock of your existence. This is the joy I think the angels are talking about in the Christmas story.

An integral part of that joy is also the ability to have fun. We need to lighten up, to be able to laugh at our own idiosyncrasies, to enjoy all of this life we have been given. After all Jesus says in John 10:10[b] “I came that they may have life, and have it more abundantly”. The ability to have fun, to enjoy the preparations for the holiday, the hustle and bustle, is important.

Just as important is to take joy in the others in our life at this time. To remember that spending time with them, being present with them, is one of the joys not only of this season but of all the year. And then never forget to acknowledge the joy that lies deep within each of us. As C.S. Lewis said, "Joy is the serious work of Heaven."

Comments

"The Sadness of Geography"

“Do you understand the sadness of geography?” I have to admit that when I first read this quote by Michael Ondaatje, a Sri Lankan-born Canadian writer, my immediate response was ‘What sadness?’ Geography is all about climate, geology, topography, the names of lakes, rivers, mountains and seas, isn’t it? It is about things, about memory work. It is not about emotions! At least no geography course I ever took was. But then I started to think….. What are those things that divide us? What are the causes of people being unhappy, persecuted, denied their basic human rights and freedoms, being ostracized in society? Those causes are the things that make people different; things like the colour of their skin, their customs and religion, how they dress, the language they speak. These things for the most part are decided not by who they really are, but by the geography of where they are born. And they persist ‘unto the fourth and fifth generations’ no matter where t

Ash Wednesday Musings, 2018

‘By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return.’ Genesis 3:19 Most scholars agree that the texts found in Genesis began to be written down sometime in the 10th century BCE and were based on oral and written traditions. It is this verse that is referenced in the Book of Alternative Services during the Ash Wednesday service, ‘Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return’. A few years ago now we attended an Ash Wednesday Service where the words had morphed to ‘Remember that you are stardust and to stardust you shall return’ moving into the cosmology of the 21st century, connecting our bodies with the whole universe. These express the beliefs of a different world view. They both call us to remember that life on this earth is impermanent and fleeting. They call us to pause and to ponder our lives. Which one resonates with you doesn’t matter. What does matter is that

"Nudgement"

As we progress through the season of Lent, we are urged by the lectionary aa well as by the words spoken from the front of the churches to consider how we live and what we do with our lives. Many of us take up a new spiritual practise perhaps denying ourselves something we enjoy or adding something to our daily routine that we think will benefit our spiritual growth in the long run. What we can seen to be doing is in fact judging our lives and then trying to make them better by doing ‘A’, ‘B’, or ‘C’. Quite a while ago I received a note from one of the readers of this blog and it has stayed with me over the time since it landed in my inbox. ‘I just coined the term "nudgement" for myself this morning. I was thinking of how EFM interprets "judgement" as something that surprises you or that you weren't expecting, which is a gentler notion of "judgement" than some of us grew up with, something that is enough out of the ordinary to urge us ou

There's Nothing New Under the Sun

‘…and there is no new thing under the sun’ Ecclesiastes 1:9 [KJV] I imagine most of you already recognize this saying as being from the bible when you hear hear it repeated as “There is nothing new under the sun”. It came to mind again for me recently when in conversation I happened to mention a magic lantern that had been use in my Sunday School days to project words onto a screen and was met with a blank look. Now when you go into a modern church, you might well see the words still being projected on a screen at the front, with the only change being in the method projection. But I bet you will hear people saying, “I don’t like the words projected up there. Why can’t they do it the old way!” My answer would be “They are.” What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is nothing new under the sun. Is there a thing of which it is said, ‘See, this is new’? It has already been, in the ages before us. The people of long ago are

Moments of Happiness

“Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your Heavenly Father feeds them…“ Matthew 6:26 NRSV Right now the colouring app that I use daily is running a series of pictures called ‘Moments of Happiness’. What are these pictures about you might wonder. Celebrations? Family gatherings? Attending a concert? All things we have missed over the last two years. The answer would be NO, NO, NO! The pictures to date have shown instead getting a good night’s rest, enjoying a morning cup of coffee, making time for some self-care, cooking, and for today, exercising at home. All things that were part both of our lives both before and during COVID… and will be afterwards as well. I was once told as an adult that not only could I not sing, but that I never would be able to. Immediately I stopped singing (even in the shower). For the most part conductors in the various choirs I had sung in over the years had left me alone. So I had had that! My frien

Boxing Day Musing

“ Sages leave your contemplation; Brighter visions beam afar. (Angels from the Realms of Glory) It is the afternoon of Boxing Day and these words have been echoing throughout my head since early morning. They remind me of the opening paragraph of this year’s Christmas letter. “As I look back over the Christmases of 2020 & 2021, as well as ahead to Christmas of 2022 I can see changes occurring. Changes that reflect the availability of vaccines as well as a growing knowledge on our part to what we need to do to live safely with COVID-19. Christmas 2020 saw gifts being delivered outside the door and stuffed turkey from M&M’s for the Christmas feast. By Christmas 2021, we had progressed to opening gifts with the family in our apartment wearing masks, and Christmas dinner arrived plated from the festive table upstairs. Never had anything tasted so good! This year will be much the same with visits from family on both Christmas Day and Boxing Day. Because Brianna & Ale

An apple a day...

I’m sure we all have heard the old adage “An apple a day keeps the doctor away”. The original phrase ‘‘Eat an apple on going to bed, and you’ll keep the doctor from earning his bread” had its first recorded use in the 1860, but the concept is quite old going back to Roman and Anglo-Saxon times. I know I heard it many times during my growing up years. And I must admit that in late years I have tended to relegate apples to an occasional rather than a daily fruit. That, however, is about to change! The following landed in my inbox not long ago and made me rethink my relationship to the lowly apple. Any one of these claims is certainly a reason to add apples back into my daily diet. “Did you know that –according to Medical News Today, which ranks apples as the Number One healthiest food based on research studies– apples can potentially: * Have the same effect as statins in preventing vascular deaths… * Improve neurological health… * Prevent dementia… * Reduce risk of stroke

Dark with Mystery

‘There is no science in this world like physics. Nothing comes close to the precision with which physics enables you to understand the world around you. It's the laws of physics that allow us to say exactly what time the sun is going to rise. What time the eclipse is going to begin. What time the eclipse is going to end.’ Neil deGrasse Tyson - an American astrophysicist , author, and science communicator I drove out of the parking lot in the mysteriously reduced sunlight during the recent solar eclipse. I knew why everything was looking different, why the light was muted, having that eerie glow. Yet still it bothered me. When we reached home and turned on the television to watch what was happening elsewhere, the full majesty and mystery of this natural phenomenon became clear. I can well understand why there are people who travel great distances each time a total eclipse cones around, just to experience it again and again. The pictures of this event have been a

Comfort Food

We all need comfort foods especially in these times of uncertainty. Mine is macaroni & cheese made the way my mother made it. There is nothing like it when I feel the need for reassurance that is well in my world. I ‘m sure everybody reading this has their own comfort food that they turn to when the stress of everyday life gets them down. However an everyday diet of that comfort food would soon prove to be detrimental to our overall health. A friend was telling me about going to a funeral just last week. Having been raised in a parsonage she enjoyed hearing the old hymns again as well as the oh so familiar words of the service even though she noticed that in her mind she was questioning the words she heard. However she found it strangely comforting after not hearing those words for so long. It was another kind of comfort food. Nothing’s wrong with either kind of comfort food as long as we don’t make a steady diet of it …forgetting that the other food is out there waiting f

NUDGINGS: a journey into the unknown

Search This Blog