Can you sense the presence of joy in the air? I can. I’m obsessed with this three-letter word so much that it’s popping up in various aspects of my life. A few days ago, I received a promotional email from Nothing Bundt Cake (yum) that read “spread the Joy.” The infographic explained how to spread the joy by giving neighbors and friends a mini Bundt or taking bundtinis to parties for dessert. The moment I discovered a Nothing Bundt Cake within walking distance of my home, I spread joy. It started with dessert for Father’s Day. It then progressed to dessert for a birthday celebration, a baby shower, Friendsgiving, an office promotion, a substitute for wedding cake slices, and even a wedding gift. Spreading joy parallels the sweetness of moist bundts in varying flavors. Joy looks and tastes different for each of us, whether we are spreading joy, receiving joy, or doubting joy. After all, we are in a pandemic, navigating masks, vaccine shots, virtual and in-person living in the workspace, church sanctuary, dating arena, school rooms, and more. How can one possibly sense the presence of joy in the air? But it’s there.
Did you know reckonsouth.com publishes a Black Joy newsletter? I told you, joy keeps showing up. Black Joy highlights the “liberative power of Black Southerners experiencing joy by expressing their full selves.” I received this joy the moment I stepped out of the car and onto the patio of my mother’s front yard the night before Christmas Eve. Uncles and cousins barbequing ribs, laughing, and talking around the open fire pit. Aunts and cousins sipped tea and wine and talked trash inside the house. Joy. The sweetness of family togetherness. The expectation of more to come. The expression of each person’s full self.
What does it mean to express your full self? Discover your identity, express yourself on your terms, and acknowledge your feelings. Most of all, expressing your full self means not pleasing others. It’s the liberating power of joy. Can you sense its presence in the air? Joy is everywhere.
Let’s be honest, we know joy also comes with pain. Joy and pain are cousins. Reckonsouth.com birthed Black Joy out of the “oppressive forces in the South” that tried to strip away joy from Black people. But “reveling in joy is an act of defiance” and the act of liberation. Why else would families and friends gather together for special occasions? Why would folks share their stories with others? Joy is bound to show up, even in pain. The reverse is true; pain will show up amid joy. Yet there’s still a sense of joy. Can you sense its presence in the air? Joy. Can you feel it? Can you see it? Can you revel in it?
According to Felicia Feaster, Olamma Oparah, the Atlanta filmmaker, paired “Black grief and joy into one bittersweet whole” with a short film that “touches on the painful, public experience of racism and the private, hopeful promise of birth.” One short film is titled “No One Heals Without Dying.” Feaster says it is the “richest work.” I agree. The title alone speaks to healing that only comes when one dies to the pain, in the spiritual and metaphorical sense. Because to experience joy, we have to heal from our wounds, individually and corporately, whatever wounds they may be. While some wounds don’t heal, others heal slowly, and many suffer from chronic wounds.
“Our deepest, most painful wounds not only leave us with scars that we bear forever but also, if we make our peace with them, leave us wiser, stronger, more sensitive than we otherwise would have been having we not been afflicted with them,” says Rev. Renita Weems in her book Listening For God: A Minister’s Journey Through Silence And Doubt. If this were not the case, the creators of Black Joy would not have evolved. Likewise, the Atlanta filmmaker would not have birthed pain and joy for display at the Mint Gallery. And dare say, activist, feminist critic, bell hooks, (rest in power) would not pen words that offer others the joy of becoming a writer. Wounds give us the courage to defy pain and choose joy.
Photo by Taylor Heery on Unsplash
Alice Walker says, in the introduction of her 1992 novel Possessing the Secret of Joy, in the moments of discovery, she “began to dance to its dance.” We, too, can dance to joy’s dance. Heal from old wounds. Make peace with our past life. Live in our life now as it unfolds. And sing to the Creator of the Universe, the Eternal God as the psalmist sang, “You did it. You turned my deepest pains into joyful dancing. You changed wild lament into whirling dance. You covered me with joyful light. You dressed me up in joy” (Psalm 30:11-12).
Can you sense the presence of joy in the air?
Until next time,
Angela