Joy has a Secret

I wrote this is 2020, but a rerun feels timely.

Christmas holds out all things lovely, but Advent is about waiting in the unknown. 2020 has been one long Advent, and to write about joy feels trite. Hope and peace reach for a better world, anticipate justice, while acknowledging the pain along the way. Joy asks me to be in this time and place and be in wonder about the now, leaving the places of future anticipation and calling me to present participation. That’s not a small ask, especially in years like this one.

I can find joy in the small things like the memories we’ve stockpiled of years past, zoom antics of the sideways head or the irreverent chat, the extra phone call to the solitary person, the promise of a vaccine, January 20th. But these small things point to a larger narrative: there is something bigger that holds us. Something that pushes past the selfish drive of humanity and shouts from the heavens to any who listen, PEACE ON EARTH. Call it angels, call it God, call it the indomitable human spirit, there are always those who refuse to let the pain of this world be the sum total of our actions and reach for more. We do hard things. We give up of ourselves so others can live. We listen to the marginalized, eating at their table. We speak healing words of reconciliation. We follow stars.

We do these small miracles, even as, maybe because, the Herods of this world inflict destruction. We say, “Not on our watch” and clothe ourselves in bits of divinity, as the Divine once donned the skin of humanity. And, so, the angels still sing, “Glory!”

That is a reason for joy.

Years like 2020 will come again, tipping all we know on edge so that we feel like we are barely holding on by a thread. But humanity will say, as it has time and time again, ”I know a secret—we have more candles.” And we will light up the sky.

“I know a secret—we have more candles.”

#joyasresistance