'Yellow Iris' by Fiona Craig
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"She turned to the sunlight And shook her yellow head, And whispered to her neighbor: "Winter is dead.” A.A. Milne, 'When We Were Very Young' |
We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world. To make injustice the only measure of our attention is to praise the devil.
- Jack Gilbert, poet
Yes, compassion is important; but joy is also important—it is what the French philosopher André Gide called “a moral obligation.” Our gift to the world comes as much through our being and presence, our smile and touch, our sense of possibility and the mystery of human life, as it does in the specifics of what we do. Wherever we go, we can be a beacon of well-being, love, and care that not only touches but uplifts those whom we encounter.
Jack Kornfield, Buddhist, Why We Should Seek Happiness Even in Hard Times
Jack Kornfield, Buddhist, Why We Should Seek Happiness Even in Hard Times
Joy is...the pure and simple delight in being alive. Joy is our elated response to feelings of happiness, experiences of pleasure, and awareness of abundance. It is also the deep satisfaction we know when we are able to serve others and be glad for their good fortune.
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spirituality and Practice
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spirituality and Practice
Is There a Place for Gladness
in Helping Save the World?
a reflection by Patricia Adams Farmer
"We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure, but not delight.
Not enjoyment. We must have the stubbornness to accept
our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world."
—Jack Gilbert, A Brief for the Defense
For all who feel deeply about the world, for all who mourn a planet under siege, for all who care about justice and human dignity and democracy and the welfare of the most vulnerable—these are hard times. Shocking and dispiriting days. I feel it, you feel it.
When is it all going to turn around? It will turn around, I'm convinced, but at a great price of waiting too long. My theory is that we humans are an eleventh-hour species, waiting until it is almost too late to do anything to save ourselves. But we do, history tells. We do. Barely. By the skin of our teeth. While the future remains open with no guarantees, I truly believe that the current moral sickness will break like a fever and we will see better days. And we who care and dare and dream and choose kindness are part of that recovery, even if we can't see the results at present.
But this is little consolation while morality and human decency continue to go south. For example, you may be made of sterner stuff, but when I hear hateful, toxic rhetoric day after day, the words seem to waft out from my TV, settling on my skin, leaving behind a layer of dirt and muck. There is no use trying to deny what's happening or run from it—we can't. There is no use wallowing in despair—we mustn't. What we can and must do is be attentive to our souls in the midst of our work for better days.
This is where "Spirit Bathing" comes in. It is a form of soul care. Spirit Bathing invites the worried and beleaguered into the flowing waters of grace and reassurance. It cleanses and soothes and refreshes our souls with goodness that is still with us, joy that is still in us, and laughter that bubbles up against all efforts to stamp it out.
Soul Bathing is highly individual in practice, but certain universal forms draw us in. One, of course, is "forest bathing," a term coined by the Japanese, in which the stressed out and urbanized go deep into the trees and discover not only superb air for the lungs, but rest for the soul. When I practice forest bathing, I can truly let go, not trying to better myself, but rather just be myself—myself with the trees: cleansing green, dappled light, the hum of cicada, and the endless varieties of birdsong. That's a Spirit Bath.
Other forms of Spirit Bathing that appeal universally include walking along a beach or a lake or in a garden. The solace of books can revive a dampened spirit, opening the pores to fresh hope and other worlds. Music and art and a hundred different forms of craft and creativity can soothe and heal. Sometimes, just being with joyful people can wash away despair.
Spirit Bathing: Notes from a Minister
Being a minister does not automatically make me an expert in Soul Bathing. Sometimes it makes it harder. In my vocation, I cannot avoid the horrors; rather, I am drenched in them because I have to address them, struggle with them, denounce them, all without running off half the congregation. Granted, I do reap a measure of uplift when preparing my sermon each week—probably more than it helps those who listen to said sermon on Sunday morning. At least I am forced to ground myself in the history of a religious text that may not always be to my liking but always stands against greed and firmly on the side of the vulnerable. And, of course, we all celebrate that seminal example of triumph of good over evil in the resurrection. It's good for the soul, all this study and struggle and sermon writing, but not relaxing. Not like a bath. A bath is not work. It's a kind of letting go like in the old bath oil commercial: "Calgon, take me away!"
Traditional prayer, meditation, yoga, and all the ancient and reliable spiritual disciplines are also good for the soul—and necessary, too. Still, when thinking in terms of bathing, the word "discipline" gets in the way. If I want to be "taken away" Calgon style, then I need not only these steady and reliable companions on my spiritual journey, but also more free-style forms of prayer and practice: the spontaneous gladness arising from a variety of experiences and places and things and people.
As expressed in a thousand ways in the Brussats' book Spiritual Literacy: Reading the Sacred in Everyday Life, the Spirit resides not only in formal religious rituals and spiritual practices, but in everyday life—nature, a cat's eyes, a beautiful painting, a colorful salad, a lover's embrace, a new place. This means that I can Spirit Bathe anywhere, anytime. I can be in my kitchen or kneeling over a flowerbed. I can be at a rock concert for that matter or on top of a grassy hill gazing down at a meadow filled with wildflowers in a riot of colors.
As a process thinker, I see God fully at home in the world, a companion to our joys and sorrows—the "fellow sufferer who understands" (Whitehead). This means that a Spirit Bath can have two meanings: one refers to my own spirit that needs renewal, and one refers to that larger sense of Spirit—bathing in God's presence and the good news that God is in every nook and cranny of the world. Spirit Bathing, then, is the practice of daily re-connection to that deep gladness, a reassurance of the divine presence in the world.
Sometimes, when our own gift of empathy becomes a curse—that is, when we feel as if the world is collapsing right inside of our souls—we can turn on the tap of that Great Empathy and immerse ourselves in the love that sustains and comforts and makes the world more bearable.
Sinking into a Tub of Stubborn Gladness
I thank writer Elizabeth Gilbert for her term "stubborn gladness" which she gleans from the poet Jack Gilbert. These days, we must stubbornly and relentlessly refuse to let despair take hold. In this way, Spirit Bathing is a form of resistance. My own stubborn gladness often takes place in the kitchen. I love my kitchen, and since childhood, I've loved baking—the mixing, the smell, the tastes, the sharing of joy! But recently, for health reasons, I had to change to a low-carb, sugar-free diet. Leaving behind my beloved baking seemed the end of all comfort and joy until I realized, with the help of the Internet, that if I just shift ingredients, I can still enjoy all my baked goods without all the carbs and sugar and be perfectly happy. In fact, the challenge has become a hobby—the creation of ironically low-carb treats. What fun to defy despair!
When I enter my kitchen for a baking session, I feel like a mad scientist entering a laboratory. I put on my white coat (in this case, a stained and tattered apron). I lay out an array of ingredient possibilities and begin experimenting over and over—trial and error, tasting, throwing out, starting over—until I find what works. When I open the oven and take out a delicious batch of coconut flour chocolate chip cookies (sweetened with monk fruit), I am immersed in defiant joy, warm and deeply spiritual, but also earthy and delicious. Creative play in my kitchen means leaving behind a wildly messed up counter of broken eggshells and spilled vanilla and a cat licking the butter. Stubborn gladness takes many forms.
And all this messy free-for-all happens while I listen to library books on my iPhone. I do not mean serious, culturally relevant books that would improve my understanding of humanity or world events, but more along the lines of P. G. Wodehouse. While entering the ridiculously funny world of characters like Bertie Wooster and his Butler Jeeves, I am immersed in delight. Sometimes I listen to time-travel books or mysteries or anything wholly disconnected from the here and now. Escapist? You bet. But a necessary excursion in the service of our larger cause of mending the world. Caregivers of the desperately ill need just such an escape.
So, whether it's soaking my soul among trees or playing with alternative flours and alternative sugars and alternative universes, I bathe myself in soothing delights as part of my daily practice of soul care. When I emerge from the "tub" of letting go, I can take on the world again. But this time, the world won't take me.
Soaking in the waters of gladness on a regular basis is a fragrant reminder of the Goodness that never forsakes us. It reminds us why we resist and what our values are. It assures us that we live in a world not only filled with violence and hate, but also stubbornly infused with divine surprise, delicious moments, and a flow of freshness that can sustain us through the worst of times—times just like these.
Whitehead's Metaphysics of Gladness
Compassion is not enough, says the Buddhist writer Jack Kornfield, the world also needs gladness. In his words:
Yes, compassion is important; but joy is also important—it is what the French philosopher André Gide called “a moral obligation.” Our gift to the world comes as much through our being and presence, our smile and touch, our sense of possibility and the mystery of human life, as it does in the specifics of what we do. Wherever we go, we can be a beacon of well-being, love, and care that not only touches but uplifts those whom we encounter.
If joy is indeed a gift to the world, the cosmos supports our gift.
At least so the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead thinks. In Process and Reality he argues that each actual entity in the universe – whether a human being or a quantum event in the depths of an atom - seeks enjoyment or satisfaction in the immediacy of the moment.
He uses the word "enjoyment" to name the heart of reality more than seventy times in Process and Reality, of which these quotations are typical.
“The actual entity is the enjoyment of a certain quantum of time.”
"An actual entity is the self-enjoyment of being one among many and one arising out of many.”
For Whitehead no actual entity is alone. It arises out of, and contributes to, a stream of feeling, which is our general sense of existence, of life itself, as process. He speaks of:
"...the stream of feeling which we are receiving, unifying, enjoying, and transmitting. This is our general sense of existence, as one item among others, in an efficacious actual world."
His point is not that we humans have a stream of feeling, as if we were one thing and the steam another. It is that we are a stream of feeling and each moment in the stream (each actual entity) seeks enjoyment. We are enjoyment-seeking creatures.
The same applies to all other actualities: the hills and rivers, trees and stars. The physical world around us is a public expression of actual entities that have subjective reality of their own, and that likewise seek satisfaction, gladness, enjoyment. The more-than-human actualities cannot avoid seeking satisfaction and we cannot help it, either. Even the universe as a whole, even the universe as gathered into the unity of an ongoing life, even God, seeks gladness. We live in, and are expressions of, a gladness seeking universe. When we share gladness with others, we share existence with others.
Heidegger is well-known for writing a book called Being and Time. Whitehead might have renamed it Being and Gladness.
I realize that gladness and enjoyment and satisfaction have different meanings for different people. If you wish, please think of gladness as a kind of enjoyment, a kind of satisfaction, of which there are others. In Whitehead's philosophy even suffering carries within it a sense of self-concern or self-care, a sense that, after all, it is good to be alive, but sometimes terribly painful, with the desire for gladness thwarted.
The point is the same. For Whitehead, something like a desire for enjoyment, a desire for happiness, a desire for satisfaction, lies at the heart of existence. In this sense Whitehead offers a metaphysics of enjoyment. A metaphysics of gladness, if you will.
As we offer gifts to the world through a smile, an embrace, a quiet presence, a listening ear, a sense of possibility, we are sharing meaning, to be sure, but we are also sharing gladness. Gladness is enjoyable but not selfish. Not only compassion, but also gladness, can help save the world.
- Jay McDaniel, 5/14/22
Yes, compassion is important; but joy is also important—it is what the French philosopher André Gide called “a moral obligation.” Our gift to the world comes as much through our being and presence, our smile and touch, our sense of possibility and the mystery of human life, as it does in the specifics of what we do. Wherever we go, we can be a beacon of well-being, love, and care that not only touches but uplifts those whom we encounter.
If joy is indeed a gift to the world, the cosmos supports our gift.
At least so the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead thinks. In Process and Reality he argues that each actual entity in the universe – whether a human being or a quantum event in the depths of an atom - seeks enjoyment or satisfaction in the immediacy of the moment.
He uses the word "enjoyment" to name the heart of reality more than seventy times in Process and Reality, of which these quotations are typical.
“The actual entity is the enjoyment of a certain quantum of time.”
"An actual entity is the self-enjoyment of being one among many and one arising out of many.”
For Whitehead no actual entity is alone. It arises out of, and contributes to, a stream of feeling, which is our general sense of existence, of life itself, as process. He speaks of:
"...the stream of feeling which we are receiving, unifying, enjoying, and transmitting. This is our general sense of existence, as one item among others, in an efficacious actual world."
His point is not that we humans have a stream of feeling, as if we were one thing and the steam another. It is that we are a stream of feeling and each moment in the stream (each actual entity) seeks enjoyment. We are enjoyment-seeking creatures.
The same applies to all other actualities: the hills and rivers, trees and stars. The physical world around us is a public expression of actual entities that have subjective reality of their own, and that likewise seek satisfaction, gladness, enjoyment. The more-than-human actualities cannot avoid seeking satisfaction and we cannot help it, either. Even the universe as a whole, even the universe as gathered into the unity of an ongoing life, even God, seeks gladness. We live in, and are expressions of, a gladness seeking universe. When we share gladness with others, we share existence with others.
Heidegger is well-known for writing a book called Being and Time. Whitehead might have renamed it Being and Gladness.
I realize that gladness and enjoyment and satisfaction have different meanings for different people. If you wish, please think of gladness as a kind of enjoyment, a kind of satisfaction, of which there are others. In Whitehead's philosophy even suffering carries within it a sense of self-concern or self-care, a sense that, after all, it is good to be alive, but sometimes terribly painful, with the desire for gladness thwarted.
The point is the same. For Whitehead, something like a desire for enjoyment, a desire for happiness, a desire for satisfaction, lies at the heart of existence. In this sense Whitehead offers a metaphysics of enjoyment. A metaphysics of gladness, if you will.
As we offer gifts to the world through a smile, an embrace, a quiet presence, a listening ear, a sense of possibility, we are sharing meaning, to be sure, but we are also sharing gladness. Gladness is enjoyable but not selfish. Not only compassion, but also gladness, can help save the world.
- Jay McDaniel, 5/14/22