Joy is the Fundamental Thing

 

Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial. Melancholy should be an innocent interlude, a tender and fugitive frame of mind; praise should be the permanent pulsation of the soul. Pessimism is at best an emotional half-holiday; joy is the uproarious labour by which all things lives.

- Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton

This is the second time I have copied this passage out my hand today, because I love it so much. It is a brief summation of the way I hope and pray the I live all the time, being my best self by way of joy. Joy is the big secret of Christianity. Joy is where all things collide with beautiful sparkle of the eternal. Nothing, no circumstances can crush joy - it does not depend on emotion or a daily event happening or not. It is connection with God. It is being more you, deeper in who you are, through God.

Orthodoxy is the spiritual journey Chesterton traces to explain, in his metaphorical, imaginative, and paradoxical ways, how he built the case and came to believe. He gives this wonderful image at the beginning of a man leaving in his sailboat from the shores of England to discover the new religion - the thing he's been searching for. Through all the exploring, he ends up landing on the same shore he left from, the same England, yet with new eyes of discovery. This is his journey of how everything he was searching for he found in Christianity, which had been there all along. He found that it filled the hole that nothing else could fill.

This passage makes makes me delight. It makes me feel whimsical. It opens my mind to the possibilities of life that is alive with joy, and has some small interludes of melancholy when life turns that way, which acts as a springboard into the joy of praise for all the blessings of being alive.

Somehow, with the grace of God, I managed to complete leading a class study of Orthodoxy and came out alive. It is a tough book, but well worth the effort, and it's not too long (under 200 pages). Though I have read it several times since college, it is a challenge. It's one thing to read it on your own and get the general ideas and take away some important key points, whilst skipping the need to fully understand every aspect. It's another thing to lead a class who has never read Chesterton before and perhaps did not enjoy his way of writing. I spent a lot of time digging into this book and learned so much. It's always the great benefit of leading a book study - I become the one in fact who gains so much from all the preparation I did. It is something I love doing. And we all got through! I hope more than anything, to convey interesting ideas to explore more deeply, thanks to Chesterton. 

Joy, which was the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian.

Ah yes, joy is the nugget so fundamental to Christianity. It is the secret that might be forgotten most often. Jesus kind of hid his joy whilst here on earth, yet perhaps displaying snippets of it when he spent time with friends at the wedding (where he chose to perform a miracle so the enjoyment of friends could continue) and many dinner parties he attended. I love the way Chesterton ends the book with joy, and the idea of Jesus's mirth. Something we can imagine with a swelling of joy within ourselves.