Changing the World with Joy

I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day. — E.B. White

ON A GORGEOUS FALL DAY, I bundle up just a bit and go sit on the rock under the apple tree in the middle of the field. The low-angled sun pours its subdued warmth onto the splashy orange of the maples, transient yellows of the tamarack, and faithfully green cedar. Further to the west, the mountains cut a postcard-perfect silhouette against the seasonally pale blue sky.

Such grace, warming my heart with joy.

A loving God calls us to experience such profligate joy. Now, in the latter decades of my life, time picks up its pace at an alarming rate. So I often promise myself to seek more opportunities to sit on rocks.

But instead, each morning, the genes of my activist mother, the teachings of my faith, and probably a bit too much of my own hubris conspire to bring on the conflicting desire to “improve” (well, okay ... save) the world.

So I strongly identify with E.B. White’s dilemma, softened by his gentle humor-with-a-touch-of-wistfulness.

Working for social justice seems like forever. I am weary of being tedious to those around me who do not understand my seemingly quixotic campaigns. I am weary listening to the current loud, vicious, largely irrelevant public clamor surrounding issues to which I am dedicated. I am weary knowing that those of us preaching minority positions that were once slammed as unrealistic have been proven right. But it took so long: civil rights, the Vietnam War, apartheid, climate change. As we slogged through our protests and The Powers That Be didn’t listen, lives were lost, billions of dollars spent, time wasted. I am impatient: Why can’t the arc of the moral universe run, rather than just bend, toward justice?

It is easy to feel self-righteous at times. Or, alternatively, guilty, when I arise in the morning and choose to simply enjoy the day.

Enjoying the world, for me, means intentionally listening, looking, smelling, tasting, and feeling whatever wildness I can find around me: The call of migrating geese, the smell of balsam, a field of mountain flowers, spring water, or the softness of a bed of moss. I am blessed to be close to these things. People can be nice too. But my spirit responds most to the wild. It is that simple.

For me, improving the world means reducing human-induced alterations to a planet I grew up with and love. Yet this goal seems to move farther away with each passing decade of my life. With less time on earth, I am unlikely to witness the success—or God forbid, the failure—of reaching the carbon reduction goals set for 2050. With or without me, we may not be able to save large swaths of the world and millions of lives because we have wasted so much time.

Perhaps for me the dilemma expressed by White is essentially a selfish thought: I am terrified that if I do not step out in the morning ready to help improve the world, that which brings me the most joy will be gone. If not for me, for my children and grandchildren.

Signs of God alongside you

In his letter to the Romans, Paul reminds us of the close association between joy and hope: “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” (Romans 15:13).

Like most of us in the field of Improving the World, I know I need to notice hopeful signs to keep me going. Hope is not the same thing as joy, but I find that when you look for hopeful things, you come to recognize them as signs of God alongside you, keeping the world afloat. You may be buoyed with an upwelling of joy.

COP 21, the two-week-long international gathering in Paris to reverse the tide of climate change and save the world, was such a sign. Although far from perfect, the results of this December 2015 conference offer a helpful first step, perhaps as magnificent in the process as in the program eventually adopted. The pictures that came out of Paris—thousands of Indigenous people, children and young folks soon to inherit the problems, elders giving their sage advice—washed over me with a refreshing wave of new hope. Here we saw the human world in all its glorious diversity of ethnicities, cultures, religious persuasions, dreams, passions, and commitments. Have we ever seen such a joyful affirmation that we are all one?

During those two weeks, there was actually talk of “keeping it in the ground,” with regard to fossil fuels. If you told me a year ago that this would be on the lips of Paris participants, I would have said you were a dreamer. Changing from a fossil-fuel-based economy to one of renewables is as economically revolutionary as the abolition of slavery. It has begun, and God be praised, I am alive to see it.

There were open discussions about the limitations of unbridled capitalism. Capitalism is predicated on constant growth, while Ecology 101 teaches that growing forever is impossible. It is about time this serious disconnect was acknowledged, even if only tentatively.

The conference affirmed Pope Francis’ eloquent articulation (in Laudato Si’) of the connection between ecological integrity and social justice. Indeed, it did even more than that. On a global scale, there was recognition that all movements toward justice are one: Climate change, immigration, refugee resettlement, inequality, minimum wage, access to healthier food choices, racism, prison reform. Injustice is at the root of all these issues, and when we strike at the root, we weaken all manifestations.

The “moral fusion” movement

Martin Luther King Jr. recognized the connections between movements when he preached against the Vietnam War in 1967 and when he preached in support of the striking sanitation workers in 1968, the day before he was killed. Forty years later, Paul Hawken, in Blessed Unrest, enumerated hundreds of groups working for various causes that are intimately related: “All is connected ... no one thing can change all by itself.” Two years ago, Naomi Klein perceptively declared in a book title the power of the connection between climate change and capitalism: This Changes Everything.

Rev. William Barber II calls the increasingly intersectional causes we are seeing a “moral fusion movement.” In his book The Third Reconstruction: Moral Mondays, Fusion Politics and the Rise of a New Justice Movement, he urged secular progressives to engage more with communities of faith. The movement is not about left and right, but right and wrong on all issues of justice—which communities of faith are already called to live out. Barber observed that younger members of what he calls the justice “tribes” seem to recognize better than the older veterans that working together gives more power to everyone’s efforts.

I take great joy from this—joyful gratitude that I have lived to see the day when I no longer have to feel a fleeting wave of guilt or uncertainty: Am I dedicating myself to the right cause? Should I spend time doing this instead of that? And can I go sit on the rock in the field for a bit?

Working for justice is a state of heart, not a category or an “issue.” And if it is a state of heart, then there should be no conflict between enjoying the world while improving it.

Recently, I went to a meeting of local faith communities exploring how we might be helpful with the world’s refugee crisis. It was an extraordinary gathering of mostly middle-aged people, veterans of many previous social justice engagements. At the end we sang “We Shall Overcome,” holding hands.

I looked around: Everyone there (even the smattering of younger activists) knew the words and the tune.

Maybe we will overcome the cynicism, the anger, the frustration, the weariness. Maybe the plan for the day can be to simply let the compassion in our hearts help us to work alongside God’s dreams for improving the world.

May the tune and words buoy us up to joy.