by Tom Hook
June 4, 2023
I am “delighted” to be with you again this beautiful Sunday morning! I’m always humbled by your gracious response to what this “seeker” has to say about our journey through this world. So, again, I say “Thank You”.
Let me begin with two questions:
How can we be joyful in a world, in a moment like this?
How can we NOT be joyful in a world, in a moment like this?
After all, we are alive today. We are taking each breath without the need to decide whether to do so or not. We awakened this morning to Mother Earth teeming with beauty and all forms of life. We live on what we, so far as we know, the only planet sustaining life through a series of evolutionary “perfect scenarios”! So many blessings, so many delights!
Much of what I have to say this morning is inspired from The New York Times Best Seller, “The Book of Delights” by Ross Gay. Ross Gay is an American poet, essayist, and professor who won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award for his 2014 book, Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, which was also a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry.
The Book of Delights came about after Gay, feeling delighted one day, decided that it might feel nice, even useful, to write a daily essay about something delightful. He came up with a simple set of rules: Write a delight every day for a year; draft them quickly; and write them by hand.
In a 2019 interview with On Being’s Krista Tippett, Gay explains that the transient nature of our being allows him to find delight in all sorts of places (especially his community garden). To be with Gay is to train your gaze to see the wonderful alongside the terrible; to attend to and meditate on what you love, even in the midst of difficult realities and as part of working for justice.
Gay sees joy as a calling, “Sometimes I think there’s a conception of joy as meaning something like something easy. And to me, joy has nothing to do with ease. And joy has everything to do with the fact that we’re all going to die. When I’m thinking about joy, I’m thinking about — that at the same time as something wonderful is happening, some connection is being made in my life, we are also in
the process of dying. That is every moment.” What is the connection between dying and joy? Well, part of it is just the simple fact of the fleetingness of life, but there is this thing of, if you and I know we’re each in the process, there is something that will happen between us. There’s some kind of tenderness that might be possible — it’s not always going to happen. But there’s the potential, I think, for some kind of tenderness.”
Potential for some kind of tenderness? I would agree. If, in the chaos of life as we know it, we can mindfully focus on the practice of seeking out delight, it can happen.
Allow an example from Gay’s essays, “Tomato on Board” #80 Pgs. 212-214
What joy & delight that little tomato seedling brought to so many that day!
UU minister, Rev. Julia Hamilton writes,
“There are two elements that seem to be part of the condition for joy/delight to arise. First, is Presence – being in the moment – in direct relationship with the world around us without trying to box it up and save it for later, or tweet it out, or worse yet, Tik Tok it while still in the middle of the experience!”
Consider his holiness the Dalai Lama, one of the most joyful humans of this century despite the tremendous sadness and hardship he has witnessed in his life. Through his practices of mindfulness and presence, he can be right there whenever joy and delight show up!
Rev. Julia continues, “The second element is a certain amount of unpredictability, surprise, and spontaneity. Joy comes when a moment moves outside your control and takes on a life of its own. When a butterfly suddenly lands on the back of your hand. When a conversation turns from superficial and moves to beauty and delight.
I invite our HUU Poet, Linda Dove, to share her original poem created for today, entitled, “Paying Attention”.
It’s in the scent of mint underfoot,
in the gaze of dawn’s saffron on oceans,
in the song of raindrops in trees,
in the shiver of hands on hot skin,
in slides of butter oiling the mouth.
Delight is a firework exploding the moment, a random smile dispelling storm clouds, a lost key’s glint like dew in the grass, dogs chasing their tails or panting for sticks thrown just for the laugh.
It sparks in a flash on eye or ear,
tempts the nose and entices the tongue.
It inclines the hand to open and touch,
floods hearts with swells of sensation,
bathes bodies in mind’s living flow.
When we attend, delight roams along trails
of remembered years; glimmers
like beckoning beacons, revealing potentials
among the unknowns, inspiring souls
with the breathings of beauty.
When we attend, we discover delight in the details of life and in the whole. Linda Ankrah-Dove © June 2023
I love that line, “When we attend, delight roams along trails of remembered years” It reminded me of the delight I had Saturday morning a week ago, crisp air, temps in low 40’s. Someone had started a wood fire in the neighborhood. Reminded me of Apple Butter days. We had old family friends who would gather friends and family each October at their home along the Shenandoah River. We would arrive around dawn to the smell of the fire in preparation for the apple kettle. Apple pealing would begin as well as prepping the pit for the annual pig roast. Stirring the apples cooking in the large kettle was a requirement (and a delight!) and would continue non-stop until late afternoon. Breakfast was cooked on gas grills and tasted mighty good with a strong cup of coffee (and maybe a Bloody Mary). Afternoon, brought the pageantry of announcing the year’s apple butter queen as everyone gathered with anticipation who it might be! Of course, there was always bribery involved! (My wife Breck was the queen 1 year!) Following the “crowning” of the queen, it was time to dispense the apple butter into everyone’s mason jars. We all feasted on roast pig, collard greens, and cornbread before taking our apple home until next year. Most all of these old friends are gone now. A generation gone by. But those memories of joy and happiness and delight were stirred again by that crisp Saturday morning and the smell of that wood fire. AND, of course, anytime I taste homemade apple butter!
Back on April 2nd, Bill Weech spoke to us on the Science of Happiness and he outlined Five Themes for Happiness. They are:
1. Gratitude
2. Relationships
3. Meaning and Purpose in Life
4. Using our Strengths
5. Self-care
In their NY Times bestseller, The Book of Joy, the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu identified Eight Pillars of Joy. They are:
Qualities of the Mind
1. Perspective
2. Humility
3. Humor
4. Acceptance
Qualities of the Heart
1. Forgiveness
2. Gratitude
3. Compassion
4. Generosity
Now these are all fantastic qualities, all of which we should aspire to in our daily lives.
However, this Tending Joy and Practicing Delight takes on a much more intensive process. Linda Dove and Mary Oliver agree:
Instructions for Living a Life
Pay Attention
Be Astonished
Tell About It!
We all have a Book of Delights – we just might not reference it often enough. Particularly in these chaotic times.
So, what is in your Book of Delights? Take a few minutes and turn to your neighbor and express a Delight from your book.
Years ago, Nadia Bolz-Weber Lutheran Pastor founder of the Church for Saints and Sinners composed a Blessing based upon her understanding of the Sermon on the Mount. In most religious circles it is interpreted that Jesus was telling us what the conditions are for us to get blessed. Maybe, just maybe, Jesus was handing out blessings left and right to anyone who may have shown up that day regardless of
their lot in life!
I mean, come on, doesn’t that just sound like something Jesus would do? Extravagantly throwing around blessings as though they grew on trees?
So, in closing I want to offer that blessing to us today.
Blessed are the agnostics.
Blessed are they who doubt. Those who aren’t entirely sure, who can still be surprised.
Blessed are those who have nothing to offer.
Blessed are the preschoolers who cut in line at snack time. Blessed are the poor in spirit.
Blessed are they for whom death is not an abstrac?on.
Blessed are they who have buried their loved ones, for whom tears could fill an
ocean. Blessed are they who have loved enough to know what loss feels like.
Blessed are the mothers of the miscarried.
Blessed are they who can’t fall apart because they have to keep it together for everyone else.
Blessed are those who “still aren’t over it yet.”
Blessed are those who mourn. You are of heaven and Jesus blesses you.
Blessed are those who no one else notices. The kids who sit alone at middle-school lunch tables. The laundry guys at the hospital. The sex workers and the night-shift street sweepers.
Blessed are the unemployed, the unimpressive, the underrepresented.
Blessed are the teens who have to figure out ways to hide the new cuts on their arms. Blessed are the meek.
You are of heaven and Jesus blesses you.
Blessed are the wrongly accused, the ones who never catch a break, the ones for whom life is hard.
Blessed are those without documentation. Blessed are the ones without lobbyists.
Blessed are foster kids and special ed kids and every other kid who just wants to feel safe and loved.
Blessed are those who make terrible business decisions for the sake of people.
Blessed are the burned-out social workers and the overworked teachers and the pro bono case takers.
Blessed are the kids who step between the bullies and the weak. Blessed are they who hear that they are forgiven.
Blessed are the merciful, for they totally get it.
Blessed Be HUU – Blessed Be!