Perhaps most of all, life should be fun. But joy doesn’t just mean happy. Or not even “very happy.” Joy means that sense of being completely engaged with the source of happiness.
We are talking for these winter weeks, between the December Solstice and the March Equinox, about personal spiritual goals.
Why do you come to church? Is the question at it most blunt.
What is it that you hope to achieve for yourself, personally, from belonging to a spiritual community like this church, from attending the programs of worship and adult faith development, and the other activities we offer here, and from committing to whatever personal spiritual practice you choose?
Why do you do it?
Involvement in a self-sustaining, self-governing, spiritual community like a Unitarian Universalist church asks a lot from you, so you must have decided that the bargain is a good one. Something brings you here. Something brings you back. And something here so nourishes your spirit that you’re willing to invest yourself in the success of this community.
I’m grateful for that vote of confidence in this faith. I believe membership in a Unitarian Universalist church is a good bargain. And I believe we do, all of us, get some very good return on our investment.
So, for you, what is it? What do you want? What are you getting? What more do you seek?
Over the next several weeks I’ll have the chance to preach about 6 or 7 possible personal spiritual goals. I’ll probably mention a few others. One of the goals I name may resonant with you as the main reason you’re coming here. Perhaps more than one. And perhaps I won’t mention exactly the goal that calls to you most loudly, but with the prompting of this worship series you may be able to name for yourself the goal that’s most alive for you.
In order to grow in your spiritual life you need to know where you’re going. Perhaps it’s a goal you can reach. Or perhaps it’s a goal that merely defines the path you take. With a goal before you, you can be deliberate about what brings you here, and what you want to go home with at the end of the program. You can make choices in how you use the church to your best benefit. And because this is, after all, your church, if you seek something and aren’t finding it here, you can help the church create the program you need.
I started this series with the personal spiritual goal of “Wisdom.”
Last week I preached about the personal spiritual goal of “Courage.”
Today I want to lift up the personal spiritual goal of “Joy.”
Here’s an example of Joy.
Jim shared with me this week a little video he found that’s been going around the internet. It’s very short.
The scene takes place at the airport. Gramma is coming to visit and the parents have brought the grandkids to meet her at the airport.
But the grandkids have decided to play a joke on their Gramma.
Have you seen those full-body dinosaur costumes? They’re really great. You step inside. A big head. You look out the mouth. Pretty realistic, but also very silly, and fun.
These kids get two of these dinosaur costumes and go to the airport. So, there are these two Tyrannosauruses waiting for Gramma to come off the plane. The video starts with them standing at the gate Gramma will come out of, and already at the beginning you can tell the grandkids are having fun and very excited to share their joke with Gramma.
And then, Gramma appears. But…
Wait for it.
Gramma has been tipped off. She had heard what the grandkids were planning. So Gramma comes through the gate wearing her own dinosaur costume. Gramma dinosaur, pulling her little wheelie luggage.
The kid dinosaurs are so delighted they start jumping up and down and clapping their little dinosaur hands. And then they run/waddle on their dinosaur legs around the barrier to hug Gramma dinosaur and for all the world it looks like a little long-lost dinosaur family reunion.
It is so sweet. And so funny.
What happiness. What joy.
Our spiritual practice should lead to lives of Joy. We should be joyful. We should feel joy in life.
For some of us, joy, is the reason we have a spiritual life, and joy is what we hope we will feel at church. Joy with our spiritual community. Joy throughout our lives outside the church. The goal is Joy here and the increased capacity to experience joy everywhere that we develop by being part of a faith community.
With our Opening Hymn we want to begin each day by affirming, “Today, will be a joyful day!”
With the Psalmist whose words were our Opening Words this morning we want to close each day by praying, “I sing for joy at all that thou hast done.”
How does the church help us find joy?
The church is a place where we have fun together. We party together, as we did last night. We sing together during worship and choir practice. We play games together at our family game nights. The church staff and I laugh together during the work week. Someone tells a joke at a Board meeting or a committee meeting. We make a friend at church and meet for lunch, or plan a trip to a museum, or meet once a week for a walk together.
The church offers fellowship: the community of the spiritual community. Fellowship is connected to fun. And fun is connected to Joy.
Not everybody seeks wisdom. And not everyone particularly needs an extra helping of courage. But everybody wants joy. We all want to be happy, right? We want church to be fun. Certainly no one arrives at worship saying, “Please, today, let the sermon be boring, and the people unfriendly, and the music depressing. I’ve got all the happiness I can take during the week. The last thing I need is a happy church.
But the spiritual goal of Joy is a little more than merely happy. Spiritual Joy is related to the fun we have at church, but a little more than just fun. The way that spiritual Wisdom is more than knowledge, and spiritual courage is more than the bravery of a fireman, spiritual joy is more than happiness. The goal of Joy is not entirely met by being entertained by a sermon of a worship band. And, in the context of spiritual goals, some kinds of entertainment can even be a danger on the path to joy.
We want Joy. We want fun in life. And we want to be happy. Those words are similar but they don’t quite mean the same thing.
Happiness can mean a lot of different things to different people. Some people find happiness in love. Others find happiness in safety and security. Some people are happy with a new car, or an exciting vacation, or are happy watching a movie, for as long as the movie lasts.
I hope you’re feeling happy right now, at least a little. Nothing wrong with that.
But Joy doesn’t just mean happy. Or not even “very happy.” Joy means that sense of being completely engaged with the source of happiness. Joy means full of life energy. Joy means merging with reality. Joy is the feeling I called ecstasy when we were talking about spiritual practice last fall, that ecstatic sense of being lifted out of yourself and your relationship with the things of the world, into a communion with the divine, communion with the source of being itself. Joy is not the opposite of sadness. Joy is the opposite of separation. We become one.
Today will be a joyful day. Enter, rejoice, and come in.
Think about that line from the hymn as not merely about entering into a room, but entering into communion with all that is. Come in, not merely into this worship space and time, but come into deep connection with the universe. I often invite you at the beginning of worship to be conscious of bringing your whole self into the room: mind, body, and spirit. Leave aside any fear, or arrogance, that keeps you outside the universal embrace. Come in.
That’s joy.
Our hearts fill. Our spirits soar. Our eyes and ears are open wide. Our skin tingles. We feel both exhilarating excitement and also a satisfied peace. It’s not the power of “I can do anything” but the wholeness of “I am everything.” And everything is in me. That’s Joy.
So you see why entertainment can be a danger to the pursuit of joy.
Entertainment can be pleasant, but a pleasant distraction. The feeling of being entertained is fun, but lasts only as long as the entertainment continues.
There’s an old word that we don’t use much any more that describes the kind of entertainment I’m talking about. The word diverting.
“How was the matinee?” You might ask. “Was it entertaining?”
And your friend might answer, “It wasn’t great art, but it was diverting.”
In ballet there’s a French term, “divertissement” which is specifically a short dance inserted in the middle of a longer work that doesn’t advance the plot. It diverts the ballet, like a stream being diverted away from its proper course. A divertissement is enjoyable. It passes the time. Maybe it’s delightful, fun, charming. Happy. But it moves away from the goal rather than toward the goal. It diverts.
In classical music there’s a genre of music called “divertimento” which is much the same. A divertimento is music for a small ensemble, intended for a social gathering, like background music at a dinner or party. A divertimento is light entertainment.
It’s diverting, but not substantial. Like a snack instead of a meal.
Perhaps it makes you happy. Or perhaps it actually gives you a taste of joy, in a fleeting way. But it’s a passing joy. It fades. You move on to the next. It’s fun while it lasts. You need more. Your appetite is whetted, not satisfied.
Spiritual joy is the opposite of diverting. With Joy, we aren’t diverted from the world, we are brought deeper into the world. The goal of Joy is a goal of engagement with the world. Not an endless, gluttonous, consuming of the world, with desires overwhelming and never satisfied, but a peaceful, satisfying, and joyful resting with the world.
The world is joyful.
I am joyful.
I am joy.
When I watched the video of the Gramma dinosaur meeting her dinosaur grandkids at the airport, I was entertained. It made me happy. But you could tell that the grandkids and their Gramma were feeling joy. They weren’t watching the experience from the outside, they were having it from the inside. And their feeling was based in the real connection between a grandparent and grandkids, and the obvious love for each other that would inspire them to set up this kind of playful joke between them.
That’s joy.
I said, speaking of Wisdom and of Courage, as spiritual goals, that Unitarian Universalism is a reality-based religion. The Joy seeker, too, seeks a faith that embraces reality. Both the happy and the sad, the fun, and the boring, and finds it all, joyful.
The Joy seeker, learns to see that reality is joyful. “Today will be a joyful day” is the truth of reality, every day, even on those days when the day is not a happy day.
Joy is engaging with existence as it is. To engage with the world. To embrace reality, and to have reality embrace us back. Not just the fun and the party and the playfulness of happiness. But the Joy of engaging with reality, which, once we are there, proves to be the ecstatic, mind-blowing, heart-opening, ego-exploding experience the mystics tell us it is.
Happiness is outward directed. To be happy, we look outside ourselves. Happiness depends on something outside us. Entertain us!
Joy is an inner gift that we carry around with us, independent of outward circumstances. It is possible to be joyful, when there’s nothing to be happy about. The Joy seeker finds a feeling of inner Joy, that outward circumstances cannot take away.
The kind of fun we have through fellowship at the church can be a foretaste of that kind of Joy. And the tastes of Joy we have here, that true and deep connection to reality where we lose ourselves into a communion with all that is, can awaken a desire to live in that heightened space more regularly and increase our capacity to do so.
Our Joy is complete. Joy is here. Joy is in us and surrounds us.
Like a Gramma dinosaur with her grandkids we are embraced by joy.