Posts tagged joy

What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?

The boy who prefers joy.

“What do they choose, these souls who go back (I have yet seen no others)?  And how can they choose it?”

‘Milton was right,’ said my teacher.  ’The choice of every lost soul can be expressed in the words “Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.”

There is always something they prefer to joy - that is, to reality.


Ye see it easily enough in a spoiled child that would sooner miss its play and its supper than say it was sorry and be friends.


Ye call it “the Sulks.”


But in adult life it has a hundred fine names - Achilles’ wrath and Coriolanus’ grandeur, revenge and injured merit and self-respect and tragic greatness and proper pride.


‘Then is no one lost through the undignified vices, Sir?  Through mere sensuality?’

‘Some are, no doubt.  The sensualist, I’ll allow ye, begins by pursuing a real pleasure, though a small one.  


His sin is the less.  

But the time comes on when, though the pleasure becomes less and less and the craving fiercer and fiercer, and though he knows that joy can never come that way, yet he prefers to joy the mere fondling of unappeasable lust and would not have it taken from him.

He’d fight to the death to keep it.

He’d like well to be able to scratch; but even when he can scratch no more he’d rather itch than not.’”  C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce

What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?

Being elbowed (by joy).

“For all sorts of mistakes are possible when you are dealing with Him.

Long ago, before we were married, H. was haunted all one morning as she went about her work with the obscure sense of God (so to speak) ‘at her elbow,’ demanding her attention.

And of course, not being a perfected saint, she had the feeling that it would be a question, as it usually is, of some unrepented sin or tedious duty.

At last she gave in - I know how one puts it off - and faced Him.

But the message was, ‘I want to give you something’ and instantly she entered into joy.”  C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

…demanding my attention.

I have a GIVENNESS NOW to being elbowed (by joy).

What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?

Not to be afraid of an eternity of joy.

“It is absurd indeed that Christians should be called the enemies of life because they wish to live forever; it is more absurd still to call the old comic writers dull because they wished their unchanging characters to last forever.

Both popular religion with its endless joys, and the old comic story, with its endless jokes, have in our time faded together.


We are too weak to desire that undying vigor.

We believe you can have too much of a good thing - a blasphemous belief, which at one blow wrecks all the heavens that men have hoped for.


The grand old defiers of God were not afraid of an eternity of torment.

We have come to be afraid of an eternity of joy.”  G.K. Chesterton, Dickens, A Critical Study

…too weak to desire that undying vigor?

I have a GIVENNESS NOW not to be afraid of an eternity of joy.

What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?

Joy in largeness.

“Satan was the most celebrated of Alpine guides, when he took Jesus to the top of an exceeding high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the earth.

But the joy of Satan in standing on a peak is not a joy in largeness, but a joy in beholding smallness, in the fact that all men look like insects at his feet.

It is from the valley that things look large; it is from the level that things look high; I am a child of the level and have no need of that Alpine guide.


I will lift my eyes to the hills, from whence cometh my help.”  G.K. Chesterton, Tremendous Trifles

 …I am a child of the level and have no need of that Alpine guide.

I have a GIVENNESS NOW to joy in largeness.

What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?

Joy in the mourning.

“There are reasons to worry.

It would be lovely if some chinook wind could pass over frozen emotions and bring the instant joy of spring.  Unfortunately, whatever “negative” feelings have been long repressed, tabooed, or denied must be brought into awareness before the repertoire of more “positive” feelings becomes available.  

In order to be free, the prison doors must be flung open and the imprisoned feelings invited into the commonwealth of the self.


Since boys are taught not to cry, men must learn to weep.

After a man passes through arid numbness, he comes to a tangled jungle of grief and unnamed sorrow.  The path to a manly heart passes through the valley of tears.


I was thirty-three years old when I shed my first manly tears.  

On the day my father died, the dam burst and I lost control of myself.  From the first awful phone call, until after the funeral, I was awash in grief.  It was the first time my wife had seen me cry.  I soon regained the semblance of control, and, when I was in danger of weeping, left the house and went on long walks.  


Four years later, I was telling a therapy group about longing for my father to return from the long trips when I was a boy when, without warning, I erupted in an orgasm of grief.  Wave upon wave of sobs followed, gathering up all of the pain of my life into a crescendo.  I cried for the boy who missed his father’s arms, the young professor who already felt old and burdened, and for the man who one day would die and never know why.  

When I finally stopped crying, I felt empty and embarrassed.  

What would “they” think of me?  Certainly they would not respect me any longer since I lost my cool.  


With some trepidation, I raised my head and began to look at the room full of people.  To my surprise I found that many had tears in their eyes and they looked at me with unbelievable, but undeniable, tenderness and compassion.

More surprising yet, I felt as if I had been purged of some poison.  My hard armor of tense muscles softened, I breathed easy and warm springs seemed to be bubbling up from my loins.


Men have much to mourn before they can be reborn.


To begin with, there is the simple sadness that accompanies the awareness of the frailty and fleeting beauty of all passing life.  We all carry eternity in our hearts and yet our tenure in time is brief and, finally, tragic.  Death interrupts the happiest of lives before all of its promises fulfilled.  

The Greeks knew what we have conspired to smother with easy smiles and false optimism - paradoxically, a tragic sense of life yields more joy than warm fuzzies.”  Sam Keen, Fire in the Belly

If I am to ask, “What is my heart’s capacity for joy?”, then I must answer, “What was my heart’s capacity for sorrow?”  If I am to ask, “Will I ever feel great joy?”, then I must answer, “Have I ever felt great sorrow?”  


Can we ever experience the depths of joy…without ever having experienced the depths of sorrow…and the depths of someone else’s sorrow?







Mourning?




…much.  




…must.  






More joy than warm fuzzies.


I have a GIVENNESS NOW to joy in the mourning.

What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?

The eve of joy.



“I divide the causes of human laughter into joy, fun, the joke proper, and flippancy.

You will see the first among friends and lovers reunited on the eve of a holiday.

Among adults some pretext in the way of jokes is usually provided, but the facility with which the smallest witticisms produce laughter at such a time shows that they are not the real cause.  What is the real cause we do not know.

Something  like it is expressed in much of that detestable art which the humans call “music”, and something like it occurs in heaven - a meaningless acceleration in the rhythm of celestial experience, quite opaque to us.  

Laughter of this kind does us no good and should always be discouraged.  Besides, the phenomenon is of itself disgusting and a direct insult to the realism, the dignity, and the austerity of hell.”C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

Laughter lifts.  Excitement exudes.  Desire delights.


Doesn’t this journey to ‘joy’ derive from detachment?

Otherwise, I only have ‘happiness’.



An acceleration from agony to anticipation?

Perhaps what’s most probable, is a palpable pleasure that never possesses…




I have a GIVENNESS NOW to entertain the eve of joy.