There is a wild mystery to the season of Advent that I don’t experience at any other time during the liturgical year. It is a wild but quiet mystery, one prone to hiding in the comfort of darkness. As such, Advent isn’t a time that I often associate with joy. Hope, peace, and love, yes. But joy? That is a word I find more appropriate for Christmas Day than for the weeks leading up to it.
But as one who also likes to hide in the quiet comfort of darkness, I enjoy playing with the idea of a joy that doesn’t shy away from mystery. One that might also regularly associate with some of mystery’s other close companions, like fear, or doubt, or pain, or―dare I say it?―despair.
In his brilliant book Inciting Joy, Ross Gay asks his readers, “What if joy is not only entangled with pain, or suffering, or sorrow, but is also what emerges from how we care for each other through those things? What if joy, instead of refuge or relief from heartbreak, is what effloresces from us as we help each other carry our heartbreaks?”
This is a kind of joy that feels familiar to me, knowable. A joy I can believe in. A joy I can practice, even from a quiet corner of uncertainty. It is a joy that invites me into both/and instead of either/or, one that doesn’t ask me to set aside my concerns about my health, or my parents’ health, or the state of the world in order to experience it. One that says experiencing joy isn’t a betrayal of those concerns, but a way to better hold them―not alone, but with the help of others.
During this third week of Advent, I invite us to notice, welcome, and embrace any joy that might emerge amidst the pain, suffering, and sorrow we may be experiencing. And, if we’re feeling brave, I would also invite us to incite joy, as Ross Gay puts it, by caring for one another through our difficulties. After all, it is during this season of Advent that we prepare to welcome the One who came to help us carry our heartbreaks and to teach us how to carry them for one another.
Prayer: Thank you, God, for meeting us in moments of pain, suffering, and sorrow with the joy that emerges from caring for each other. Embolden us through that joy to be yours hands, your feet, and your heart in this hurting world. Amen.
Noelle Tennis Gulden has been a member of Highland Baptist Church for almost three years, along with her husband, John, and their two children, Quinn and Else. She serves as a deacon, co-facilitates the Prodigals Bible Study, and is a member of the Anti-Racism Team.