Fruit of the Spirit: JOY

In the movie Forrest Gump, Forrest said, “My mom always said life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get.” After today we should change that saying to, Life is like a box of fruit…. You never know what it’s going to be!

What I loved most about those strange fruits Jen showed us is that you really had no idea what they would reveal inside just by looking at the outside. Each one contained a secret surprise that was only revealed when we cut it open and each will continue to hold some of it’s secret until we taste them later! Will it be sweet or tart? Will it taste like a sour patch kid? Will it bring us joy down in our hearts?

Elijah, from our scripture reading today, knew all about surprises. There he was at the end of his rope. Tired and sad and scared…. So much so that he went out alone and asked God if he could just die. There was no hope or joy down in his heart, or anywhere else in his being. The angel of God came to him and told him he needed to rest and eat and rest and eat and have something to drink. And then he was ready to take the journey he needed to take…. Like most heroes who have to take a journey to find what they seek, like most of us who have to take a journey to become who God made us to be.

Elijah’s journey took him to Mount Horeb to search for God and to listen for the joy….the voice of God. But he did not find it in the obvious ways. It was not in the great wind. It was not in the earthquake. It was not in the fire. Where Elijah found the voice of God, where he found his calling, where he found his next step was in the silence.

Isn’t this often our truth too? We think we can find joy in material things, or in food we eat or in having the right car or someone’s ideal body shape. But joy does not come easily…. And it does not come in the ways we expect it to. Joy is a much deeper thing that comes to us as a gift from God. And often we have to journey to find it. It’s not manufactured, but goes hand in hand with deep faith. For, I think, the way to true joy is to travel through the struggles, through the doubts, through the questions through the tears, through the healing. And then joy comes in with the dawn, breaking through all that has been to surprise us once more with it’s beauty painting the world in pinks and oranges, that brighten the world around us.

This week I met with a directee for a spiritual direction session. She said to me, as part of our conversation, that she was someone who chose joy. Each and every day, she said, she chose joy. As I asked her more about that, it turned out we discovered that this was actually not possible. She can choose to put on a happy mask. She can choose to appear joyful in public. But choosing joy is not something that we can do, for it truly is a gift of the Spirit, that transcends any masks we may be wearing, or any appearance we may have. Joy comes from within, down in our hearts, like a spring that bubbles up from the depths of our beings.

Yet joy seems to be something that fades as we get older. Think of a small child bubbling over with joy as they taste their first sweet strawberry, or jumping in a puddle with great abandon. The look of joy is in their whole being as they truly feel the presence of that gift of that moment. Their whole body reacts in a physical way as they express their utter delight. As we mature, this joy filled expression feels further away from us. We travel through life and begin to pick up what is known as the negativity bias. For negative experiences have a bigger impact on our brains than positive ones. One example is if you love dogs and have always enjoyed playing with dogs when one decides to bite you one day. Even though for years you have never been scared of dogs, this one incident causes you to be cautious around them from this point onwards. Because one dog bit you, all dogs have the potential to hurt you. And the bias begins to change your way of being around dogs. Or if you are getting feedback about a task you did, you are more likely to remember the one bad comment you heard, even if there were a hundred positive compliments.

I remember when I was 11 or so. I was in an art class in high school and we had been tasked with drawing the tentacle of an octopus. For some reason I really got in to this project, and carefully drew and colored each sucker and worked to get the texture just right. I was enjoying what I was doing and the teacher came around and complimented my work. I handed it in with pride, excited for this first project I had had to do in high school. And then I got my drawing back, graded. A letter written in red right on my beautiful drawing. A big, fat D. I was devastated and confused and embarrassed and hurt, all in one. I screwed up the drawing and stuffed it in my bag. And from that moment on I decided I was not good at art, and as soon as I could I dropped art as an elective.

And this can be true for many of us. The negativity bias we live with often means we make decisions from this place, rather than a place of joy or freedom. We avoid dogs. We beat ourselves up about the ways we failed after one negative comment. We drop a subject at school because we feel humiliated. We stop jumping in puddles because we got told off for ruining our clean shoes. We avoid situations where we might get hurt again, or we enter into those situations already believing the worst will happen and then searching for evidence that that is happening and therefore reinforce the negative bias by looking for the worst and seeing it in tiny doses. If we have had a bad experience at a party we might go to one believing that no one really wants us there, that we will be ignored when we get there, that we are not going to know anyone or have any fun and we are just going to be stressed out the whole time we are there. When we arrive everyone is already paired up in conversation and so our belief that no one wants us there is reinforced, even if we are then soon greeted warmly and included in the conversations the rest of the evening… that one moment will take a hold of us and color everything else.

Yet, there are ways to open to the gift of Joy in our lives. The divine gift that longs to take hold of our lives so we can make more choices based in hope and faith. Robert Thurman, a Tibetan Buddhist, says, “immeasurable joy arises from… under the surface of suffering, where there is a deep, perhaps even cellular, exuberant enjoyment in any living being.”

So Elijah, even if he did not know it, was searching for this immeasurable joy…. And he found it under the deep suffering he had been in, even to the point where he thought there was no point in life anymore.

For Joy is divine. While feelings such as happiness usually come from external sources and are temporary, joy comes from within, deep within, so deep that it comes from that place where God dwells inside us, that spark we have been given of Divine light that never goes out. It is always abiding. Yet, what kindles joy is unique to you. No two people experience it in quite the same way….

Perhaps because all our micro negative experiences imprint on us and create unique pathways that fork and split and twist and turn in ways as individual to us as our DNA. Yet the path to joy is ultimately a return to wholeness—a rediscovery of who we are and what makes us happy; a return to God. It involves a journey of getting to know, and move beyond, our fears and insecurities, moving closer to the One who created us and calls us Beloved. Over time, life starts to unfold with more ease and challenges are met with good energy and creative solutions. The way becomes easier as we allow the negative biases to recede and walk with a faith in God that brings us closer to joy.

And this is not a pollyanna-ish kind of faith, but a faith that can only come when we have been through something hard. When we have journeys like the heroes in all the great stories we hear. When we journey as the hero of our own life, facing the demons and dangers we encounter, taking on the challenges we are offered, walking with courage into the unknown and searching for the jewel or ring or gold nugget or…. maybe, truly, just ourselves in God’s presence. In California I used to take my 8th graders out into the wilderness as part of their confirmation classes. Once there they would spend 24 hours alone…. Sunrise to sunrise. No contact with people (unless they needed to come back to base camp to check in), a limited amount of food, no tents even. Just a sleeping bag a tarp and some warm clothes… and lots of water. Off they would be sent as soon as the sun rose, and come back the next day to share how God had met them there. And God always met them! But one of my favorite parts of this program was not even listening to those stories of how God had met them, but getting up while it was still dark, starting the fire, getting some water and oatmeal going, all while scanning the horizon to see if someone was coming back to base camp yet. As soon as we spied one of them, we would begin to holler and drum and cheer, welcoming them back into the fold….. and the joy on their faces lit up the camp. It was so apparent they had been on a journey during their time alone, they had survived alone…. And found out something about themselves that they didn’t know, they had met God… and maybe even done a little wrestling with God during the night, and now they were returning with a deep sense of joy at what they had experienced and accomplished and learnt. And this joy lasted for many, many years after, for it was a joy that kindled the flame of the Divine within their hearts and gave them courage and hope for the rest of their lives.

So if you are in a place where you want to give up, follow Elijah’s footsteps. Find some true rest and some good food. Then set out on your heroic journey of discovery and searching. Know you will probably face hardships on the way. Know you will find things that amaze you on the journey. Know that it might take time. Know that there will be tears and fears you have to feel. Continue to find places to rest and feed yourself well. And, eventually, you will come to that place where you are ready to face and listen to and be in the presence of God in a way that will transform your life forever. A way that will kindle the joy within you. A way that will allow bring your being to a greater sense of wholeness. And that joy, placed deep in your heart, will begin to guide your life more than the negative biases, will begin to influence your choices and decision, will tamp down any fear and allow you to step into your courage more easily. That joy, a gift from the Spirit, will live in you and will be there with each journey you take toward even greater wholeness in God.