This Joy

Thinking of Melanie and monks tonight. Yes, yes I am writing yet another morose novelette at 2 am. Stop complaining. I don't write very often. I got home late tonight from a friend's birthday party and found Melanie alone in the living room, still awake and feeling very dejected and lonely. I sat down beside her and we began to talk about life, philosophy, and faith. Specifically, we discussed how we think faith fits into each of the above, theoretically and personally. It added some admirable symmetry to my thought patterns for the day- I started out the day thinking about this joy thing. I was washing already clean cuboards at my job when suddenly I acknowledged to myself that I do not possess anything that can be accurately termed "this joy". I know joy exists somewhere and that it should be something I can attain; however, for the time being, "this joy" remains "that joy": the joy located somewhere else and belongs to another being than myself. I know why. A few months ago, God told me it was time to start a new search of his Word. The last cohesive Word search I engaged in began with a concordance list of all the verses in the bible that involved the words, "heal" or "healing". It was a good time- right in the fall of last year as university was just beginning again. I loved the solitude, the quiet, the peace, the comfort as I began each day in our basement family room with only God, the lamp, and my dog for company, looking up and writing out a few verses each day. When the list was done, I assumed the topic was finished. Silly me. "Because," sayeth the Lord unto me, "healing is the siamese twin of joy." Silly me again, I never bothered looking up any of the long list of verses that incorporate the term "joy" or "joyful," and my spiritual growth came to a pointed standstill very quickly. Which brings me to where I am now. Uneasy. I really like that word for describing my current mental state (and by current I mean starting four months ago and continuing to present). I am forever ruminating about what remains to be done, ever alert to the presence of an unnamed danger I'm not prepared to prevail over completely. I went to my shifts at the DC crisis lines this week and realized that I'm no less afraid of their capriciousness and unpredictability than I was when I first started the volunteer position months ago: I just know how to react better now. Knowledge has made me sloppy. I used to pray my heart out before and during every shift, fearing failure against the dark powers twirling into chaos the unprotected lives of many callers. Now I seem to operate on autopilot; reading a novel or text book between calls, catching a nap on the c-train ride there. It is not the DC alone. Even out of school, I spend hours every day travelling the city on foot or city transit. At work, I perform mindless tasks like washing dishes or vacuuming. Do I bother interceding for my family, friends, or aquaintances in either circumstance? Do I ask God questions or listen in case he has something to say to me? Hell no. I recite the endless list of things I promised people I'd do this summer and develope schemes to fit it all in. Or, having become disheartened with that list's formidible size, I distract myself by mentally reciting the latest book I've started, picking out alternate twists for the plot. I wear no armour to protect me from the little and large inconveniences that hit me during the day. They just kill me uninhibited because I don't (won't?) invite God to stay with me in my travels. After all, I didn't do what God asked me to do for my own good, so why should I complain to him when things don't go right? And so, I find myself reading books like they might be burned tommorow, laughing or smiling a pasted on smile with friends at parties I wish I wasn't at, eating food until I feel sickly over-full after commanding myself to cut back to half of what I normally consume, and loading my backpack as if I plan to move out today for a walk around the block. Joy: a part of healing, perhaps inextricably fused with the concepts of hope or faith. But I haven't sought it and haven't run into it by chance either. Melanie also is finding joy illusive. Except she's actually been seeking it. God, I really don't understand why it's so hard for Melanie to find you, to hear you, to touch you, or see you. She tries so hard. Mel told me once that she's begun to believe that God just doesn't ever speak to some people. Everything in me screams it's a lie, but I still can't explain why if God is speaking and Melanie is listening she's not hearing anything. Experience at Epic has convinced me that every child of God is created with the ability to hear their daddy, although I acknowledge that he probably speaks more to some than others. Issac definitely got fewer memos than Abraham or Jacob. But I don't remember anyone in the bible to whom God never spoke in one way or another. A different explanation is therefore required. In psych, there's a theory that people are primed to hear what they expect or want to hear. Melanie admitted that she's been looking for very specific answers to her questions (ex. where should I work?) and so she hypothesized that God wants to talk to her about something more abstract or general. In the general realm of things, Melanie is very hurt, yet very numb. She's sure that God withholds joy from her as punishment for some lack on her part. When I suggested last night that perhaps healing must precede joy, Melanie pointed out that if that were true, no one would ever feel joy because there's always new wounds being opened. Personally, I'm of the belief that most wounds can be traced to just a core few which get reopened, but she might be at least partially right. Maybe joy causes healing, rather than just proceding from it. Darn the English language for being so miserably vague. One of the first debates Melanie and I engaged in about joy last night was its definition. What the duece is joy? And what distinguishes it from other terms like happiness or faith? As far as Melanie and I were able to determine, Happiness is an emotion or feeling of elation that is largely dependant on circumstance. Ex. Drinking hot chocolate with whipping cream and a candy cane melted in it after a cold winter night walk makes me happy. Being outside in the sunshine surrounded by living plants in the summer makes me happy. Brightly wrapped packages bound in ribbon make me happy. Lightening storms make me happy. So does riding on a large roller coaster. Smelling and/or touching moldy potatoes in my fridge makes me decidedly unhappy. In contrast, Joy should remain even in the absence of preferable circumstances. It goes beyond emotion to a sort of knowledge that there is still accessible beauty and goodness in dark places. I admit, my definition is still problematic. Since I define faith as belief in things unseen and hope as faith in the occurance or existence of something good/desirable, then there's not a lot to differentiate these from joy...unless joy is more the ability to find or see the goodness hoped for and believed in. I dunno. It's all speculation and ramblings until I actually do my search. Ok, so I know you're still waiting to hear how monks fit into this. I have one name for you: St. Francis of Assisi. He started the Franciscan order of monasticism, which strongly advocates worshiping God through communal living in a context of poverty. Francis was the son of a very wealthy merchant who, after miraculously covering from extreme illness protracted in a war, decided to seek God in a life of simplicity. Several friends ended up following him. Why? Because he had SO MUCH JOY. Simplicity. I don't even know what that would look like for me. On the one hand, I want deeper relationships with God and people from church, but I also need to focus on schoolwork and friends made there, family members, and building relationships with people outside my christianese bubble, as well as getting some physical exercise in and earning the money required to do all the above. On the other hand, I heard from my brother that there's a group of Epic goers who decided that meeting once per week was not sufficient for building meaningful community so they are now meeting every day in a pub. I crave friends that close knit. But it's impossible for me. There's too many people to know, too many things to do, too many things still to learn. As Melanie put it: "What do you do when there are dozens of doors open for you to go through, but none is better than the others?" I didn't have an answer then and I still don't have one now. All the lonely people: where do they all belong? I don't know for me and I definitely don't know where Melanie is supposed to be, but I suspect that the key to either of us hearing God clearly, and therefore in finding this Joy, is in a community somewhere, in which we'll be able to figure out what our weaknesses and strengths are for. But where, where, where? And can the Joy be found before we get there? Um, I'm finished babbling now. I'm leaving.