“Perfect Joy”

Is there to be found on earth a fullness of joy, or is there no such thing? Is there some way to make life fully worth living, or is this impossible? If there is such a way, how do you go about finding it? What should you try to do? What should you seek to avoid? What should be the goal in which your activity comes to rest? What should you accept? What should you refuse to accept? What should you love? What should you hate? What the world values is money, reputation, long life, achievement. What it counts as joy is health and comfort of body, good food, fine clothes, beautiful things to look at, pleasant music to listen to. What it condemns is lack of money, a low social rank, a reputation for being no good, and an early death. What it considers misfortune is bodily discomfort and labor, no chance to get your fill of good food, not having good clothes to wear, having no way to amuse or delight the eye, no pleasant music to listen to. If people find that they are deprived of these things, they go into a panic or fall into despair. They are so concerned for their life that their anxiety makes life unbearable, even when they have the things they think they want. Their very concern for enjoyment makes them unhappy. The rich make life intolerable, driving themselves in order to get more and more money which they cannot really use. In so doing, they are alienated from themselves, and exhaust themselves in their own service as though they were slaves of others.

My opinion is that you never find happiness until you stop looking for it. My greatest happiness consists precisely in doing nothing whatever that is calculated to obtain happiness: and this, in the minds of most people, is the worst possible course. I will hold to the saying that: “Perfect joy is to be without joy. Perfect praise is to be without praise.” If you ask “what ought to be done” and “what ought not to be done” on earth in order to produce happiness, I answer that these questions do not have an answer. There is no way of determining such things. Yet at the same time, if I cease striving for happiness, the “right” and the “wrong” at once become apparent all by themselves. (Thomas Merton, Thoughts On The East,  “Perfect Joy”)

Is happiness something we find, or something that finds us? That is a great question, and one we should focus upon as we contemplate our faith and relationship with G-d. Thomas Merton says: “Perfect joy is to be without joy. Perfect praise is to be without praise.”

Now, I am not a philosopher, but I am willing to delve into some philosophical thoughts once in a while. When I was still single, and trying to date, I will be the first person to admit that my choices in dating partners was, well, interesting at best – a little destructive at worst. I strove and strove to find someone with whom I might be able to plan a future with, the ever elusive “until death parts us”. After many years of striving for happiness, I gave up the hunt, so to speak. And as soon as I gave up searching for happiness, happiness slapped me right in the face, when I ran into my future wife while playing in a band. I did not plan to go to the place where Fritzi and I “re-connected” – I had not intended to “seek or find”. And yet, within two weeks, having reconnected with my future bride, happiness had once again surfaced in my life. And the rest is 30+ years of happiness.

I think Thomas Merton is right – we can search and search for happiness, and our searching can take us to all the wrong places. But, when we stop searching, and allow G-d’s love to embrace us and bring us peace, then joy has a chance to find us.

Pastor Dave

“Chuang Tzu would have agreed with Herakleitos. What is impossible today may suddenly become possible tomorrow. What is good and pleasant today may, tomorrow, become evil and odious. What seems right from one point of view may, when seen from a different aspect, manifest itself as completely wrong. What, then, should the wise man do? Should he simply remain indifferent and treat right and wrong, good and bad, as if they were all the same? Chuang Tzu would be the first to deny that they were the same. But in so doing, he would refuse to grasp one or the other and cling to it as to an absolute. When a limited and conditioned view of “good” is erected to the level of an absolute, it immediately becomes an evil, because it excludes certain complementary elements which are required if it is to be fully good.” (Thomas Merton, Thoughts On The East,  “Taoism”)

Heraclitus or Herakleitos was a Greek philosopher before Socrates, and a native of the city of Ephesus. He is famous for insisting that change is ever-present, and as such, change is the fundamental essence of the universe. His most famous saying is: “No man ever steps in the same river twice”. This is commonly considered to be one of the first digressions into the philosophical concept of “Becoming”. The concept of “Becoming” is the possibility of change in all creatures. This is contrasted with Parmenides, who is famous for his statement “what-is is” (sounds a lot like our recent familiar saying: “It is what it is”) – and this is one of the first digressions into the philosophical concept of “Being”, or “the existence of a thing. Anything that exists has being”.

As such, Parmenides and Heraclitus are commonly considered to be two of the founders of ontology, or the study of “Being as it relates to individual existence”. A good example of ontology or “Ontological change” in the church, is our understanding of baptism. Through baptism, we believe that the person being baptized goes through a fundamental and important change – from personhood, to “child of G-d”. In the process of our growth as humans, our baptism moves us from “becoming a child of G-d”, to “being a child of G-d”. And that, my friends, makes all the difference in our journey of faith.

Pastor Dave