Jean Vanier on growth and the capacity of the heart to be broken.

http://www.altervideomagazine.com/2011/10/28/enlarge-life/

Joy is in the acquiescing

I used to wonder why C.S. Lewis found himself so “surprised” by joy. There is so much joy in life –and hardship too, of course –but ultimately joy knowing God has already purchased our joy-everlasting.

But finding joy in this life is not a choice but a command and it must be fought for daily. We are called to partake in perpetual communion –daily eucharisteo –thanking God for everything all the time….this is where the deep joy we all want to experience is found. As I read her book, One Thousand Gifts, I was encouraged by Ann Voskamp to verbalize and journal all the little gifts/graces I notice God bestowing on me everyday. Obviously, all of life is grace but how does one become exceedingly grateful for the exceeding blessings in life if they aren’t each carefully spoken of, reflected on, treasured? Can the heart fully register what the mind doesn’t first fully process?

Is there any true way to discover joy but as surprise? We all must fight for joy daily…fight to be continuously surprised by joy that is experienced again and again day after day by the same objects and people and tasks we must encounter no matter how mundane or tiresome or lackluster they become or seem to us overtime.

For a while, I thought if only I could run though the open fields and dance all crazy and run in circles until I fall down dizzy then I can experience some of this child-like joy to the fullest…but how to find the same kind of joy when folding laundry, grocery shopping, or writing a paper? This is why being surprised by joy is such a terribly hard and serious fight….we don’t always see joy in every moment, yet God is in every moment.

We are called to complete the Communion service in service. I love this quote by Tagore: “I slept and dreamt life was joy, I awoke and saw life was service, I acted and behold, service was joy.”

Henri Nouwen once said: “The discipline of gratitude is the explicit effort to acknowledge that all I am and have is given to me as a gift to be celebrated with joy.”

Gratitude is certainly a discipline –it definitely takes grace to acknowledge grace. Going through the daily grind doesn’t look so daily or so grinding when we really acknowledge that every moment is sacred and every hour is Holy Communion.  But will we accept the gifts He has given us? 

a million drops of gratitude

What does it really mean to more fully understand God's love? I grew up being told that the purpose in life is "to live for the glory of God." But if someone were to ask me today what the purpose is, I would probably add "to learn to realize more and more everyday just how much God loves us." As a young child (both literally as I refer back to the day when I still carried around an American Girl doll and metaphorically speaking as I still am a young child of faith as we are all this side of heaven), I understood I was made in God's glory by Him and for Him but the implications of this didn't easily translate into other ways of knowing and understanding of and reflecting on what it really means besides the obvious -obedience.

Learning to love other people more and more selflessly is how we become more fully aware of just how much God loves us. Learning to love while forgetting yourself in the process is the essence of sanctification. Thankfulness lies at the heart of it. The Garden legacy, that Eden bite of fruit, the catalyst for all our sins was really the sin of ingratitude. Adam and Eve would not have sinned if they were completely satisfied with everything God had already given them in the Garden of Eden. We constantly fail to see the material world for what it is meant to be: as the means to communion with God.

For forty years the Israelites ate the mysterious substance of manna -a name which literally means "What is it?" They ate mystery. Their daily nourishment came from that which they did not understand. I held a four week old baby dying of AIDS this summer. Cancer and mental illness have unapologetically made themselves a part of my family. Two days after my visit to the central garbage dump in Guatemala City several hundred people die as it collapses into a major sinkhole -this was their home, their livelihood, and now their grave. We eat mysteries everyday. But how do we eat these mysteries in closer communion with God...giving up guilt and resentment and allowing bereavement and righteous anger to pave a way for greater gratitude and exceeding joy?

I have both seen and experienced great pain and I now I am beginning to realize more and more how I only deepen the wound of the world when I neglect to give thanks. "Rejecting joy to stand in solidarity with the suffering doesn't rescue the suffering" (One Thousand Gifts, Voskamp, p. 58).

I like this quote by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin a lot -"Nothing here below is profane for those who know how to see."

The next quote is a bit provocative but I believe its beauty and truth overpowers its provocativeness so I take the risk:  "The unit of wine is the cup. Of love, the unit is the kiss. That's here. In Hell, the units are the gallon and the fuck. In Paradise, the drop and the glance."

I can't wait to be filled completely with God's glory again but for now I must learn to more fully understand how all of life is grace. Every breath's a battle between grudgery and gratitude....and the more we embrace a heart of gratitude, the more we embrace God's love.