WHY ARE YOU SO HAPPY?
My fiftieth year had come and gone,
I sat, a solitary man,
In a crowded London shop,
An open book and empty cup
On the marble table-top.
While on the shop and street I gazed
My body of a sudden blazed;
And twenty minutes more or less
It seemed, so great my happiness,
That I was blessed and could bless.
William Butler Yeats, “Vacillation”
This past Christmas Eve a little boy visiting my church followed me around for a while, then demanded to know: “Why are you so happy!?” His tone was one of skepticism and surprise, if not shock. Maybe he is the product of an increasingly cynical culture; maybe he is unaccustomed to overt expressions of elation, or perhaps his family finds little to celebrate in life and faith. These days, many of us are guarded in our enthusiasm and suspicious of anyone who seems giddy. Those who grin unfailingly must be faking it, we assume, or at least oblivious to reality. These freaks of fancy must be hiding something and are certainly not to be trusted with weightier matters, which of course, MUST weigh heavily on all of us in order to be spiritual or important. I have even heard a number of serious spiritual commentators condemn a popular television preacher for the sin of smiling too much and for being too positive. Perhaps they long for the good old days when bad old news was the rhetorical norm, and televangelists performed their assumed duty of oppressive, if not depressive condemnation.
I find myself smiling a lot these days. That makes some people uncomfortable and leaves others wondering what the hell is wrong with me. I can speak only for the source of my own joy, and even then I’m still guessing. But I believe such joy originates from a much deeper place than mere “happiness” although to the casual observer they might appear to be the same. Howard Thurman writes beautifully about the varieties of joy in the human experience. Sometimes joy, he says, is dependent on circumstance or the mood of our companions. Sometimes joy is compounded and complex. Sometimes it is earned and determined. But sometimes it is simply a gift: “It has no relation to merit or demerit. It is not a quality they have wrested from the vicissitudes of life. Such people have not fought and won a hard battle; they have made no conquest. To them joy is given as a precious ingredient in life. Wherever they go they give birth to joy in others – they are the heavenly troubadours, earthbound, who spread their voice all around and who sing their song without words and without sounds. To be touched by them is to be blessed of God. They give even as they have been given. Their presence is a benediction and a grace. In them we hear the music in the score and in their faces we sense a glory which is the very light of heaven.” (Thurman: “Joy is of Many Kinds”)
This is the kind of joy I want to experience in my life. This is the kind of joy I sometimes do experience in my life. It is the great happiness Yeats recognized in that London shop after a milestone birthday, the blaze of recognition that we are blessed and we can bless. This awareness is the authentic religious experience, the deepest source of joy. It is not complicated or complex – and perhaps all we need to know to bring a song to our lips and a smile to our faces.
I am still not completely certain what that little boy saw in me on Christmas Eve. It is possible that the source of my joy that night had more to do with the meatballs and champagne that awaited me after the late service! But more likely it had to do with an awareness of God’s love and the great privilege of sharing the gifts that I have been given – the deep down knowledge that I am blessed and I can bless. Such simple truth makes me incredibly happy.
