Joy is one of my favorite topics, so I was very, well, joyful, when I saw the title for Bruce Epperly’s second reflection on the days of Christmas.  I mean, I named my dog Joy — does that give you a hint about how important the idea of joy is to me?  And I mean joy — not happiness.  Really, they are two different things altogether.

My definition of joy is this:  that feeling of peace that underlies all being (even when we are not aware of it).  I experience joy as a kind of contended hum–almost like the soft purring of a cat.  It is the sound of the motor of life, for, without an awareness of joy in all things, we can never experience our humanity in any real sense.  Joy is at the root of both pain and happiness; it is the fire of all our lived experience. Joy, lived into, gives birth to wonder.

And so, I was happy to see that Howard Thurman said much the same thing:

The mood of Christmas—what is it? It is the quickening of the presence of other human beings into whose lives a precious part of our own has been released. It is the memory of other days in which an angel appeared spreading a halo over an ordinary moment or a commonplace event. It is an iridescence of sheer delight that bathes one’s whole being something more wonderful than words can ever tell (Thurman, The Mood of Christmas, quoted in Epperly, 31-32).

This kind of joy, this “halo over an ordinary moment or commonplace event,” is the closest that we in our human form ever come to truly understanding and experiencing that love which is the very nature of our God.  It is the spark that ignites those thin places where we stand between what we think we know and what we know that we do not know.  Our knowledge of holy joy gives us a moment when we are aware that we are both less than God and part of God.  And Christmas, coming at the darkest part of our year (at least in the Northern Hemisphere) is here to remind us of all of this:

‘In the bleak midwinter,’ God’s glory shines. On the shortest days, when the sun sets in mid-afternoon, a light guides our way. We see this light in the faces of children and discover this holy light in our own hearts. Every moment reveals eternity and we are joined with loved ones everywhere, in this world and the next  (32-33).

Joy, in this sense, is everywhere.  It is in the celebrations, it is in the loneliness, it is in the lost and forlorn.  It is the breath of all God’s creation.  I guess, for me, joy and light can be synonymous, and what could be more Christmas-like than that — for now, at this time of year, we celebrate both.

I wish the joy of Christmas to you and yours.  I hope you will join me this day, and, as you walk through the minutes and the hours, take a moment and look for the joy, the light, that is everywhere in all the lives and breathes and has meaning.  Amen.