Tidings of Comfort & Joy, No. 7

Tidings of Comfort & Joy, No. 7

Today's #songsofcomfort comes from Ben Gibbard. It's called "Life in Quarantine." 

 And our message of comfort today comes from St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

"At our best," writes ALSAC CEO Rick Shadyac, "we look out for each other, especially the most vulnerable among us. We do a stranger a kind turn. We lead with our hearts."

Rick says they "went looking for acts of kindness - and found them everywhere." And so St. Jude has launched a new project: the Inspired By You blog.

Check it out!

I love "Ode to Joy." Beethoven's genius is revealed in all its splendor in his Ninth Symphony, which has been a source of inspiration across the globe in recent days.

Earlier this week, the Colorado Symphony came together virtually to #PlayOn. And this evening, the Rotterdams Philharmonisch Orkest did the same.

I'm not crying, you're crying!

Krista Tippett has been sharing some of her On Being podcasts that speak to this "unsettled moment." Today, she shared a conversation with writer Ross Gay, called "Tending Joy and Practicing Delight."

And it just struck me with chills.

"Joy," says Gay, "has nothing to do with ease." Rather, "joy has everything to do with the fact that we're all going to die."

When he said that, it stopped me in my tracks and made me pay attention.

He goes on to say that "we all have this common experience - many common experiences, but a really foundational one is that we are not here forever."

"And that's a joining," he says, then adds, "a 'joy-ning.'"

Later in their conversation, Tippett has Gay read from his book, The Book of Delight, from an essay called "Joy Is Such a Human Madness," that is just devastatingly beautiful.

I'll quote it at length.

“Among the most beautiful things I’ve ever heard anyone say came from my student Bethany, talking about her pedagogical aspirations or ethos, how she wanted to be as a teacher, and what she wanted her classrooms to be. She said, ‘What if we joined our wildernesses together?’ Sit with that for a minute. That the body, the life, might carry a wilderness, an unexplored territory, and that yours and mine might somewhere, somehow, meet. Might, even, join. 

And what if the wilderness — perhaps the densest wild in there — thickets, bogs, swamps, uncrossable ravines and rivers (have I made the metaphor clear?) — is our sorrow? Or, to use Smith’s term, the ‘intolerable.’ It astonishes me sometimes — no, often — how every person I get to know — everyone, regardless of everything, by which I mean everything — lives with some profound personal sorrow. Brother addicted. Mother murdered. Dad died in surgery. Rejected by their family. Cancer came back. Evicted. Fetus not okay. Everyone, regardless, always, of everything. Not to mention the existential sorrow we all might be afflicted with, which is that we, and what we love, will soon be annihilated. Which sounds more dramatic than it might. Let me just say dead. Is this, sorrow, of which our impending being no more might be the foundation, the great wilderness? 

Is sorrow the true wild? 

And if it is — and if we join them — your wild to mine — what’s that? 

For joining, too, is a kind of annihilation. 

What if we joined our sorrows, I’m saying. 

I’m saying: What if that is joy?”

That's deep. Sit with that for a while. And check out their entire conversation between Krista Tippett and Ross Gay here.

On a lighter note, here are some small delights for you...

• Your kids (or you, who's judging) might be interesting in this Tiny Desk Concert from the one and only Harry Styles.
• Speaking of Tiny Desk, they dropped a really incredible performance, including a cover of Prince's "1999," from Coldplay, backed by a nine-piece gospel choir, last week. And you know I'm a snob who would never recommend Coldplay, so you know it's good.
• And you've got to check out the Chino Hills High School Chamber Singers, whose choral festival scheduled for last week was canceled, but who connected virtually to perform together anyway. (Almost as good as the kids is this write-up from the AV Club, humorously titled, "Ruthless School Choir Stages Direct Assault On Human Heart.
• Oh, and you can now order a five-pound bag of movie theatre popcorn from Malco, to be delivered to your door!

Live. Love. Laugh. Pray.