The Power of Subversive Joy

When I was a young graduate student in the Religion department at Princeton University, Cornel West drew this distinction between happiness and joy. Happiness is ephemeral, he argued, often driven by and dependent on external circumstances like markets that lead us to believe that we might be happy only by possessing things.

But joy is something deeper. Joy is rooted in love; in the deep relation we have with others. It isn’t ephemeral. Instead, joy emanates from the depth of one’s soul, and though it may seem fleeting, it grooves pathways in the spirit that endure long after the moment that occasions the experience. In this sense, joy can be subversive.

Imagine the joy in holding your child in your arms for the first time. The feeling that settles in the heart, the sense of grace and gratitude that engulfs the spirit, and the responsibility that reorients you to the world and to the life that you claim as you own. That joy can hold off the ugliness of one’s circumstances and ignite a fierceness in defense of that love that can challenge anyone or anything that endangers it.

To put it another way, joy can be a reservoir of hope that sustains us in dark days.

I was thinking a lot about subversive joy this weekend. My son married the love of his life. I watched her watch him. Smiling as wide as the universe. I heard them declare their love for each other in front of family and friends who love them dearly. Tears accompanied the sacrament. I noticed his friends from different phases of his life—friends from college, law school, and the young men he has known since the fifth grade. Communities of love.

Happiness cannot bear the weight of what I felt. This was joy. In my son’s face I saw the baby who laughed fully belly laughs when I pulled his bouncy to my face and made funny noises, chuckled at the young toddler in his Tiger Halloween costume saying “cheese” as he put his hands on his hips to take a photograph, felt regret as I saw the adolescent who cried tears because of me, and overwhelmed by the young man who brought the love of his life to our home for the first time. Smiling shyly but clearly smitten.

At the wedding, we danced. We cried. We shouted with joy with grandparents who ranged in age from 96 and 93 years to 83 and 78 years old. Survivors of cancer. Steps a bit slower and uneasy, but whose love blossomed in another generation. They were witnesses, still.

And no matter the absurdity of the world, and the ugliness of our days, joy broke through. Cage fights and war didn’t matter. Trump didn’t matter. My son and new daughter embarked on a life together. So, we tended to our hearts, because that remains the prize.

Joyful. (I suppose some Knicks fans are feeling this, too). Resilient. This feeling won’t change the world, but it helps us survive so that we might keep on fighting the good fight.

Psalms 30:5 comes to mind: “Weeping may stay for a night, but joy comes in the morning.”

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