Being the Joy

How might we be?

I’m in Tacoma, Washington, at the inaugural Zion International Film Festival. Identity: The Andrew Nemr Story is an official selection, and I’ve made the trip to support the film, meet some people, and make myself available to whatever else might happen (one never knows). These kinds of trips, into the newness, are always an adventure. I’m only here for a day, but Identity is screening twice, so I get to watch the 23-minute distillation of my life two times, almost in a row. I’m still getting used to that experience of bearing witness to my own retelling of my story with such brevity.

In a scene from the film, I’m driving in my car pontificating on the nature of my relationship to my dancing. I say, “The way my dancing is now, it’s more about the joy of dancing in the presence of my Lord, than working anything out.” In one of the post-screening Q&A sessions, I received the following question, “How did you get from your dancing as an expression of working something out, to it being an expression of joy in the presence of your Lord?”

Now that is a good question.

I am an only child. Alongside playing with cars, Legos, G.I. Joes, swimming, and a host of other fun things, I have been tap dancing almost as long as I’ve been having memories. My relationship to my dancing has evolved over time, as most relationships do. As best as I can summarize, it began as a place to pursue achievement. I could be good at it, and so I pursued being good. It then morphed to the vehicle by which friendships came as I was grafted into the tap dance community. Here, tap dancing was a language – a way we had of speaking with one another, deeply connected to the music we all listened to and our individual and communal personalities. Then came the hurt. As can happen especially in one’s teenage years, I encountered feelings of betrayal, abandonment, and isolation. I went to my dancing to work these things out. And that was just the way it was for a while.

Then came this realization. No matter how “good” I was, or how much I tried to work things out in or outside of my dancing, I could never get good enough. Sure, I would experience glimpses of goodness, confidence in my abilities, almost pride in my achievements (that’s a whole other story), but nothing pervasive. It could all come crumbling down in the next poor performance, the next bad choice, the next opportunity to do good that I failed in. There had to be something completely different, at a foundational level, and boy is there ever.

Experiencing the Father

I’m lying down on the floor as I’m hearing the voice of my friend and pastor, David Kim, over a zoom call. He is slowly giving prompts, asking questions, pointing attention, for a number of us as part of a guided listening journey. I had been doing a few of these as part of my post-burnout, pandemic-facilitated, rebuilding process. This day was unique. I do not remember what the exact prompt was, but I do remember what happened to me. My tears began to flow, and as I was crying, I yelled out the word, “Father!” I knew exactly who I was calling for, AND I knew I was met with a kind of response. That call out came from somewhere deep within me, and the response – a kind of balm for my soul that felt like immersion in water and a hug all at the same time – met the depth of the calling.

I had never called out to God with the term Abba, Father or Daddy, before. It was always, Lord, God, or something that felt honoring of the difference in position between me and God – the closest I had gotten to something intimate was Heavenly Father. But here I was yelling for him. It wasn’t in anger. I needed help. I wanted his presence over all else. And father is who I called for. What I received in that moment and in many moments that followed was a pervasive feeling of goodness, rooted in my father’s undying, unwavering, overwhelming, and all-encompassing love for me. Yeah, that’s different.

What followed was a series of reminders of the experience of joy from my past. Remember what it was like to jump into the pool like a cannonball? Remember was it was like to body surf at the beach? Remember the joy of discovery of something new? Remember the joy of bringing a little tap dance step to life? God brought every one of these things to my mind as if to say, “I was there. You did that with me.” I slowly began to see that the activity itself was not the thing I derived joy from. The activity was the excuse to experience the presence of my father. It was in his presence that I derived joy.

My attention shifted, and my joy compounded – engaging in activities with a more conscious setting of my mind on the face of God. The joy of discovering part of the character of God – one that I had known before but had receded to the back of my mind – was greater than the discovery of any step. “God really loved me that much?” I would catch myself thinking. “I can really just hang out with him?” The joy of seeing a little slice of heaven come to life in front of me was greater than any tap dance piece I had ever brought to the stage.

A New Definition

I like Dallas Willard’s definition of joy, “A deep sense of pervasive goodness.” It’s all around. It cuts through my bones. It never ends. It frames the challenges and successes of life, the mundane moments and the heightened ones, in a new context. Instead of a context in which my challenges and successes where first thought of as signs of my ability to work out my life, everything is seen from the first and deeper truth of being immersed in the pervasive goodness of a God who is love.

This is a huge shift. It’s not easy to maintain such a perspective when the majority of the world around us is organized against such “foolishness.” A quick look around will easily bring to sight evidence for why no one should hold a deep sense of pervasive goodness. There is simply too much hardness and evil that abounds. But isn’t that the whole entire point? That even in such a world, we are able to experience the love of the Father, the way of the Son, and the power of the God’s Spirit? This is the kind of joy that gets set before us, maybe even in an analogous way to the joy set before Jesus – a joy so powerful that he willingly laid down his life and took it back up again.

A Different Kind of Gift

How in this world are we supposed to even begin to think about getting to this kind of joy? Let along sharing it. Frankly, I don’t know. This is a journey after all, and for every one of us, there will be different steps to take. Some of us will need to engage in new activities, while others will need to intentionally disengage. The purposes of each choice will remain the same – to do what we can do to facilitate what only God can do – open our hearts to himself, the giver of this joy. After all, God alone can work at the innermost parts of person. God alone can shift the way we see, hear, and think. We can do what we can, such as refraining from cultivating destructive wants, or engaging in reflection or celebration of God.

Much of this process, however, ends up being personal. What of our friends and neighbors? Is it possible to share our journey towards joy (if not our own experience of joy) with them? Can you begin to imagine a world in which more people approach life from a deep sense of pervasive goodness? What a different world it would be. But such a world only comes about through sharing what we have been struck by, are pursuing, and have maybe at times been caught up in. It is important here I think to acknowledge that this kind of joy transcends the ideas of positive psychology. It is not something that you think your way to, although thinking is of course involved. It is not something that you put on, like a mask or persona. This is something you embody, and live out, in such a way that others can’t but help but see a difference, and maybe be affected by it.

And maybe that is what we can give – the gift of a different way, the seed of curiosity, the power of a question mark. Maybe we receive a wonderful question in return of our journey of joy embodied. Maybe conversations, shared journeys, and compounded experiences ensue. Maybe not. The path of joy is not endeavored for the sake of sharing, but once begun, it can’t help but be shared. So, maybe here, we don’t concern ourselves about the when, or whom, or how the sharing will happen. Better to concern ourselves with the journey we’re on, and let the overflow of the joy we take in along the way spill out of us in the moments we bump into others.

Letting the joy abound.