A Bright, Insistent Spasm of Defiance

Last week I spoke about how in more or less normal times, when our months and weeks are filled with days that sometimes move from joy to joy to joy and that sometimes move from no good events to terrible, horrible events, to very bad events, in more or less normal times we can train ourselves to fine tune our attention to the joys. I promised that this week I’d talk about joy in the context of times that are far from normal. Times like 2025.

Everything I said last week still applies: find a friend or family member or spiritual director to coach you or partner with you in recognizing that “some days are like that, even in Australia” and to summon you into noticing joy, until you have enough practice to do those things for yourself. Seek a mental health professional if you find yourself absolutely or even mostly unable ever to experience joy. Participate in church activities as a way to build your joy muscle, and come to Sunday services to encounter joy through the variety of worship elements. I’m not going to offer a substantially different strategy this week.

Recognizing joy and receiving joy aren’t different practices in times like these; they simply matter more in times like these. Though they might also require a slightly different angle of approach, and will, more significantly, require a deliberate intensification of our openness to joy. Because in times like 2025, in times when you or a family member is living with an active addiction, times when you or a beloved have suffered a life-altering injury or diagnoses, times like the raw, chaotic, numbing period following a death or sudden estrangement, natural disaster or house fire–in times like these life can seem completely bereft of joy, so we have to be more diligent about our practice of noticing it. And in times like these if joy does present itself to us, arise within us, it can feel unseemly. So we try to ignore it or suppress it, feeling shame for experiencing it at all before we’re able to quash it. To acknowledge the presence of joy, to allow the sensation of joy, might seem like a betrayal of the memory of the one/s we have so recently lost, or a diminishing of the gravity of the disaster, or a willful and dangerous denial of the harshness of reality.

W. H. Auden caught some of this beautifully in his poem Funeral Blues:

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,

Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,

Silence the pianos and with muffled drum

Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead

Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,

Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,

Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,

My working week and my Sunday rest,

My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;

I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;

Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;

Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;

For nothing now can ever come to any good.

While Auden’s poem speaks of the wrenching aftermath of one specific death, to me, the mood his words conjure applies to more generalized and pervasive losses as well. Such as we are currently living through, and any of the losses I mentioned a moment ago. When our world has suddenly plunged into despair, it seems inconceivable that anyone anywhere should not also be living in despair, that anything other than despair can exist.

But joy happens. In the midst of the deepest, most heart-rending grief, in the aftermath of disaster, in times of war, in periods of historic uncertainty, when anger or fear are the prevailing emotional state 99.9% of the time for weeks and months on end. Joy happens. Babies are born. Love is kindled. The sun rises. Rainbows appear. Animals being animals strike us as ridiculous. The trees green. Music excites and soothes and inspires. Breezes waft the fragrance of flowering blossoms across our path. The ocean changes colors in the shifting of light. The humidity drops at the end of hurricane seasons. Words sometimes convey what we mean them to convey. Cancer goes into remission.

Joy happens. Even in a mutilated world. Not only that. This is important–joy happens even in a mutilated world and the human heart is capacious enough, resilient enough, to hold the joy and the mutilation, the joy and the grief, the joy and the fear, the joy and the uncertainty–and still keep beating, sustaining us in life. William Blake put it this way in Auguries of Innocence

It is right it should be so

[We were] made for Joy & Woe

And when this we rightly know

Thro the World we safely go

Joy & Woe are woven fine

A Clothing for the soul divine

Under every grief & pine

Runs a joy with silken twine.

Suffering is an inextricable element of human existence, but we cannot not endure sustained, unrelieved woe or grief or fear or uncertainty for long periods without consequences to our physical, mental, and spiritual health. So it is that joy is also an equally inextricable element of human existence. It is an antidote and preventative measure for the toll woe takes on our bodies, minds, and spirits. It heals the wounded places in our spirits and in our bodies. It gives us a pause to breathe, release tension, regroup for the work that lies ahead. It sparks energy for creation, collaboration, and resistance.

Joy - what writer, actor, musician Nick Cave describes as “a bright, insistent spasm of defiance within the darkness of the world”–joy springs forth in our hearts and we remember that the story isn’t over yet. The brokenness and cruelty of the world have neither crushed possibility nor extinguished beauty and love. Joy springs forth from our hearts not to obscure or camouflage the grief and the anger, the fear and uncertainty, but to offer us a choice–surrender to all that would destroy us or say “Too long have [we] walked a desolate way,/Too long stumbled down a maze/Bewildered”.

Thus, far from being a betrayal of our love for the ones who have died, far from diminishing the gravity of the disaster, or willfully and dangerously denying the harshness of reality, our joy stands in testament to our enduring love and calls us to respond to the gravity of disaster by the very contrast it provides, and defiantly demands we remedy the harshness of reality. In these troubled and troubling times, may we therefore be courageous enough to abandon ourselves to all the joy that comes our way. Amen