Complete Joy

Without necessarily noticing how or when it happened, I realized I have felt spiritually stuck. The prayer not taking off kind of stuck. And I noticed this in the retrospect of getting unstuck.

What has unstuck me is literally being surprised by joy, to steal a C. S. Lewis phrase. This theme of joy has been standing out to me in Scripture, but it has been that sort of moment where you read a passage of Scripture you have read for 40 years, but suddenly it opens up for you in a completely unheard of way.

That's how joy has struck me.

I'm not sure I have ever previously meditated on what joy is. I have tended to passively regard it as either something I experience, or I don't. Or, actively I have regarded it as a choice: I will choose to rejoice and be glad. Gritting my teeth, telling God I'm glad for xyz. I've probably gotten that mixed in with "In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus." Or as they say in Fiddler on the Roof: God would like us to be joyful/ even when our hearts lie panting on the floor/How much more can we be joyful/ when there's really something to be joyful for?

What is this joy thing?

What is striking me right now is that joy comes from the union of my will with God's will. God's will for me is extreme love and goodness, overflowing and filling me. But this is not prosperity gospel nonsense, because God's will is also that I be conformed to Jesus, and Jesus suffered and died and redeemed the world. God's love overflowing through me occasionally results in my sorrow. That famous one-liner from my late spiritual director: Jesus gave Mary pain. Love is powerful redemptive stuff, and it is possible to love until it hurts. Think of the stories of the martyrs like Perpetua and Felicity and their companions. They were literally so full of joy that they did not immediately feel the wild animals ripping their flesh in the coliseum.

Joy is an ecstatic experience: it takes us out of ourselves. The union of my will with God's takes me out of myself and unites me to God. It fills me with the power, the ability to do things, and the fuel is love, ecstatic love.

In order to experience joy, I need to have my will both strengthened and purified. I need to have a strong faith to believe in God's goodness and in His love for me. I need to be purified and humbled through the experience of receiving his love. I need to have all the passageways of my soul opened up and flowing. I need detachment. I need submission and obedience. I need good reason. I need to examine my life, know what my duty is, and give my full yes.

And then ask, ask, ask for his joy to fill me.

I read John 15 about the vine and the branches this morning as if I'd never seen it before. It struck me, when Jesus says: "I am the vine, and my father is the vine dresser. He takes away every branch in me that does not bear fruit, and every one that does, he prunes so that it bears more fruit," that he is telling us something about his interior life. It also struck me that he is telling us something about our interior lives as well. We are branches in him, but our lives also have branches from us, and, just like I wrote above, all the passageways of our souls need to stay opened up and flowing. There will be nothing to flow if we do not stay connected to Jesus, and through Him to the Father. We do not have life in ourselves apart from his life in us.

He tells us all of this and then says (v. 11) "I have told you all this so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete." He doesn't say I'm telling you this so you can feel really happy, and then embroider this on a throw pillow. He is talking about union with God, remaining in Him, living His life, bearing His fruit, being of one mind and one will with God. Complete joy. He says all this immediately before his passion and crucifixion. "For the joy set before him, he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God" (Heb. 12:2).

So joy is not something I try to feel, or feel by choosing, or just sit around and pine after like an impossible dream. It is a reality I step into, acknowledge, welcome, live in. "Lord, when your glory appears, my joy will be full." So says the psalm antiphon I have sung over and over again. The glory of God is man fully alive. Union of God is the ultimate aim of human life on earth. It is the what opens out into the beatific vision. It is joy. Pain, suffering, and human life are in no way incompatible with joy, but life without joy grinds down to fleshly willpower or tired indifference. To be vigilant for the presence of joy is also to be vigilant after union with the Beloved.

Trying Again

Obviously I didn't move very far in getting back to writing, as I said I intended to back in June. But I do occasionally get around to reading. Lots of things I wrote in past years stick vividly in my mind (as do the experiences that occasioned them). It is a concrete reminder of what has happened, interiorly. More often than not I am stunned as I go back in my emotional and spiritual memory to recognize and really face how much I have changed in the last few years. 

But for some reason, writing is off-putting to me now. It isn't only that I made myself so rawly vulnerable in the past that I basically had to heal from it. I may have a teensy weensy bit of PTSD when it comes to writing. 

It also seems to me that if I cannot write, or do not write, there is some fear at work, some hiding at work, and I don't think that's so good. 

Life is at a different speed, that's for sure. Not only am I constantly busy, but I am finding myself staying busy as a shield. One difference in my life is I have a lot more people who are asking for my attention, for my service, for my help, for my input, for my time, for my energy. To be honest, I used to feed myself on those kinds of requests. I took this kind of busy-ness for being loved and valued. Well, that's a good way to just get used, because I was always ready to say yes and give more, because once you start to try to fill the need for love in your heart with activity, you can never stop. But these days, it isn't like that. I am surrounded by people with need of one kind or another, and I'm the go-to person to help, to do. There are times when all these different people in my life -- who don't know about each other -- are all coming at me at the same time wanting me to do something for them, needing my help. I don't get warm fuzzies from helping. Sometimes I want to spend the entire day quiet and alone -- and goodness knows when the last time was that I did that. But I recognize that the needs are real and I'm available. I recognize the call to serve, to give, to care, to love -- but it is by no means an emotional warm fuzzy thing. Most of the time it is very not that.

And here's the thing. So, I have a new spiritual director these days. I had another for a few months and, well, we won't even get into that. But this new director has an approach focused on plopping me into Scripture and dealing with what happens there. And guess what I end up facing again. I have to go back to what God has given me, in all those years of transformation when I wrote a lot. I have to, with this kind of seasoned approach, go back, look at it all, own it, re-own it, bask in it, with the consciousness that is more mature than the WOW of the first experience. To fully acknowledge what God has given. And to drink from THAT well. Go straight to Him and drink there, from the anamnesis, so to speak. 

So I groan a bit. Anamnesis is the memorial offering, the thanksgiving offering, but it is also the reminiscence. The true thing is, when I think back on the beauty of what God has done, I cry, and I'm stirred. But it is also a battle, frankly. The part I see right now is that it is a battle because I am faced with more choices. I'm faced with rejecting the Pharisiacal heart that holds my own standards up as That Which Must Be Met. Do I want to feel good about myself, or do I want to be whole and holy. That's what it boils down to, sometimes. 

I think of St. Teresa whose feast it is today. She wrote a commentary on the Song of Songs when it was considered a tad scandalous for a woman to do that. But I guess she felt the Spirit of God tell her to write. And now she's a Doctor of the Church. I also thing of St. Catherine of Siena, trotting off to advise the Pope. I'm sure there was someone who told her (if not her own interior voice, at times) that this was not the place of a Dominican teriary, and a woman at that. But how does being whom God created us to be set the world on fire if there is no death to self in the process? Sometimes the hardest way to die to self is to feel unrighteous in what God calls us to do. Been at this location, performed that task. Back here again.

There are other reasons I groan. I kinda know some of them. Physically I've been exercising a losing weight and restarting my metabolism, which is like my body getting younger by a few years, which is all great, but it also sets me back into some anxiety issues I had those few years ago. Working with that. I'm feeling pretty powerless in several relationships these days. I guess I'm not working with that because frankly I don't know how. So I give them every day to Jesus, which is more than I can say I've done in years past. And there's a layer I'm not sure of. I've always thought I was sure of everything, especially about the inside of me. I hope its progress that mostly I feel like a shoulder shrug. Meanwhile, I keep answering the immediate requests of people for my energy. 

I guess I groan because I feel a shift on the horizon. That's nebulous. Maybe it is wishful thinking. Probably not, because there is always a shift on the horizon; my life is constantly changing. I'm learning to partner with the Lord. 

Pray for me, neh?