Kissing the Joy

Can you tell me why some days overflow with joy while others are humdrum at best, and the pits at worst? July 5th - an extra day in a magnificent weekend; should have been one of those joyful days, with nothing big planned...rest, relaxation, a small household project, topped off by a White Caps game with good friends...pretty much the good life. No complaints; all good. but in the grand scheme of things, it came and went as expected. Some days, like July 5, you are just glad that nothing went wrong to spoil the plans. So be it.

Then there was yesterday, July 6. The extra day off on Monday set Tuesday's agenda - picking up loose ends from Sunday. I figured a day in the office was in order; mail from the long weekend, the last few Annual Conference details to wrap up, phone calls to return, a worship service to build...pretty much the normal routine of life. Same old, same old...

Then, bit by bit, unplanned and unannounced, joy arrived: (1) A phone call made to the insurance company produced the good news -- more reimbursement than expected for items stolen on Palm Sunday evening; (2) An email from a young couple whose wedding I officiated in 2003, asking about baptism of their first child; (3) A trip to Novi to see our two grandsons, Brendan who played baseball and Karson who just played...oh - our son Nick was there too. All an incredible gift; (4) Finally, at the end of the day, an 11th-inning walk-off home run by Johnny Damon to keep the Tigers alone in first place.  Even the one planned event - the trip to Novi - provided it's own unpredictable moments of joy - a fist-bump after Brendan's come-from-behind victory and an exuberant hello-hug from Karson, complete with dusty hand-prints all over my shirt. The kind of hand prints you want to frame and hang on your wall.

Taken together, these two days are proof positive of the Yiddish proverb: Mann traoch, Gott Lauch (Man plans, God laughs). 

William Blake has a little poem, "Eternity" where he talks about how a too-tight grip on life destroys it. His advice is to release our grip and "kiss the joy as it flies."

"He who binds to himself a joy, does the winged life destroy.
He who kisses the joy as it flies, lives in eternity's sunrise."

We hold tightly to life and we find disappointment; we destroy the winged life. But if we kiss the joy as it flies through our experiences, our thoughts, our coming and going...every such moment is a sunrise.

I'm a planner, an organizer, a designer of much in my life, which is to say that I must leave God laughing a lot. One thing I know: When the God-given joy flies unexpectedly in, I can cling desperately to it, freezing the moment for future reference like a fist-bump, or dusty hand-prints on my shirt. Or, I can kiss it and let it go, knowing there will be another sunrise simply because that's how grace works. I think I'll give grace a chance.