Surprised By Joy

My reflection on personal and political miracles

NOTE TO READERS: I published this four years ago, about a month after Joe Biden took office. At the time, I wanted to share my strange experience of his inauguration day and my reflections on it, because it seemed possible it could help others like me who wanted to avoid being brought low by disappointment and fear. Though I think it’s likely most of my readers are celebrating tomorrow’s ceremony, I decided to re-share this with some post-script thoughts, because despite the changing of the guard in our nation’s capitol, the challenge of letting go and leaning into uncertainty is continually relevant in our conflict-riven world. For those of us hoping for a renewal of American values under Trump’s second administration, our spiritual task is the same as it was when those values felt directly threatened by Biden’s administration. Our political dramas, our cultural battles, our victories and losses, are always the fodder for the hidden fray within us. They’re the messy, juicy, painful, hard material through which we wake up and grow up, spiritually. Today we’re living in a different moment (thankfully!) than four years ago, but my experience then grounded me in a way that carried me helpfully forward. I hope reading it serves usefully for you, as well.

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[Originally published February 20th, 2021]

I was surprised by joy on Joe Biden’s inauguration day.

You see, I did not vote for him and Kamala Harris and I have serious concerns about the direction they will lead America economically, culturally, and globally. So as January 20th approached I was not looking forward to it, except perhaps in the sense of getting it over with. Putting it behind us. I was steeling myself for a day of feeling gloom. Of staving off a sense of doom.

Yet when I awoke that Wednesday morning and thought about the impending ceremony, something unexpected occurred. I started thinking about all the people who were waking up to it as a day of celebration and I could so clearly imagine their joy, the depth of their relief and renewed hope, that I actually felt myself relax into the exaltation of their mood, felt myself uplifted into contentment in the moment. I felt a kind of quiet gladness, not for Biden assuming office, but for those rejoicing on account of it. And that lightness of spirit stayed with me throughout the whole day in spite of my grim concerns for the future.

The surprise of it got me thinking about energy. Not the kind that powers a lightbulb or car, but enlivens hearts and minds. Spiritual energy, and its limitless nature. How it isn’t contained by time and space such that in the cold of an overcast winter day, at the dawn of an administration I fear, I was able to be touched and upheld by the simple awareness—a genuine perception—of collective joy not my own. I started thinking about what it takes to connect to that kind of energy and decided it hinges on one basic thing: letting go.

In this particular experience it was a spontaneous impulse to let go of my own perspective and envision the moment from the hearts and minds of people who saw and felt very differently than me. That small choice to let go of my anxieties and ponder another’s joy, and my heart’s recognition of that, its reverberation with it, transformed my entire experience of that day. It was a miracle, in a way. An unexpected—but not accidental—gift.

In trying to let go in my own life, I’ve noticed it is a multi-faceted effort. One way to approach it is through the practice of non-attachment. This means actively working not to become so cemented in our preconceptions, so attached to our certainty about What Is True or The Way Things Are, that we blind ourselves to the existence of everything we don’t know, haven’t seen, or can’t imagine. If I had clung to my fears on inauguration day, to the coherent and compelling narrative of impending ruin signified by the facts as I see them, I would not have been disposed to ponder—much less been touched by—the opposing reality of celebration. Amazingly, I didn’t have to share at all in the vision of Biden voters to share in their joy. It reminded me how crucial it is when we whole-heartedly believe something is true, when we feel confident that our own perception of reality is reliably accurate, rooted in facts, to leave ourselves room to be wrong. And not just in a theoretical sense . . . as an intellectual hat-tip to the possibility. But leave genuine psychological space. That is non-attachment.

Part of creating that space involves letting go in another arena. It means developing a willingness to relax our personal agenda for happiness—our Very Solid Ideas about what will bring us fulfillment or stand in its way. It’s allowing for the likelihood that what we believe about the circumstances necessary to live meaningful or contented lives is incomplete, even disputable. This doesn’t mean doubting the fundamental truths and values that form our worldview so much as it requires accepting that we don’t actually know what we don’t know, even about ourselves, and that our ultimate wellbeing hinges far less on situations outside of ourselves than on how we respond to them from the inside—what meaning we create out of, or in spite of, the circumstances and events around us. (Victor Frankl, you may recall, was an exceptional spokesman for this truth.)

Letting go of our agenda is made easier when we cultivate an attitude of curiosity. If, rather than dismissing people or perspectives we disagree with, we open ourselves to the possibility that we have at least as much to learn from them as we have to fear (or criticize), then what we regard as wrong-think or ignorance will still provide us—even maintaining our opposing viewpoint—opportunities to discover important truths about ourselves and world around us. We don’t have to accept an idea or support an opinion in order for it to be useful to us, to be helpful as a vehicle for new insights and growth. So rather than resisting what we dislike we can open to it—become more curious than afraid—and so foster a more magnanimous disposition within ourselves. One that nurtures a willingness to be changed, humbled, expanded. One that helps sow the seeds of lovingkindness.

The essence of lovingkindness is a generosity of being towards others. All others. It is the earnest effort to extend empathy, to withhold our virtuous judgments, to assume the best about people rather than the worst, to actively look for their good intentions and to interpret charitably, rather than doubtfully, whatever hints of them we might see. Fostering this graciousness of spirit in ourselves is arguably the key to accessing the universal energy of love because it mirrors its core qualities: patience and mercy, humility and forgiveness, gratitude and trust, joy and equanimity. In other words, it cultivates the paradoxical strength of a softened heart. That is the conduit for love, the receptor through which such energy flows, connects us, and multiplies.

Opening ourselves to this universal stream involves one final choice—a practice, really—that goes against our instincts yet grows our receptive capacity: the willingness to be present in the moment. When I contemplate our current political climate and the direction of our new leadership I easily become caught up in fears, in worst-case scenarios, a cascade of catastrophic “what ifs?!” that overwhelm my sense of optimism and hope for our future. When I catch myself spinning into that vortex however, I find I can escape its hold by pulling myself into the present. I focus my awareness on the moment I am in, grounding myself in my body’s physical sensations and the conscious recognition that what is happening in my immediate proximity is unremarkable and safe, and more often than not, peaceful and calm. The fearful futurescape I’ve envisioned does not exist; the reality is that my reality is not only acceptable, but overflowing with blessings for which I can be grateful. For which I am grateful when I recall myself to step back and recenter on them. This is a practice of awakening again and again into present awareness, letting go of the stories in my head to be mindful of What Is.

The benefits in learning to let go have been known and taught for centuries. The modern-day prayer “Let go and let God” has helped save many lives, natural and spiritual, exactly because it encourages a degree of humbleness, trust, and acceptance that can cultivate release from the suffering endemic to our weaker selves, to our controlling instincts. Tapping into the universal energy of love is an exercise in this kind of letting go. It calls for the intentional, conscious loosening of all our ego reflexes—grasping, assuming, managing—such that we recognize opportunities to surrender our fears, surrender our desires, surrender our certainty about things that are fundamentally uncertain. It is in those moments, when we wholly and truly step out of our own way and are elevated out of our habitual self-concerns and conceits, that we have the possibility to discover the transcendent flow that is in us but not of us.

It is then we might find ourselves uplifted into the energy of love, our spirits warmed, lightened, filled . . . find ourselves blessed with the precious comfort of peace, and surprised by joy.

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Looking eastward, from my front lawn on September 7, 2024

Screenshot from iPhone video of the intense and lasting color

POSTSCRIPT:
Miracles happen out of the blue—or gray, like the rainbow pictured above. This heavenly beauty visited us one early evening in September, following an unremarkable rainstorm. But it became quite a remarkable experience—magical. Like a miracle. From the second photo—a screenshot from a video clip—you can see how intensely vivid the colors were. But what you can’t see, and what made this prism of light so unusual, was how incredibly long it went on . . . and on . . . and on . . . and on . . . and on. It remained wondrously bright and glowing for nearly half an hour.

Now, I don’t know about you, but where I live rainbows typically come and go quickly. Usually it’s a matter of minutes from beginning to end, the color filling in, shining, and fading out until it finally disappears from continual cloud movement and the sun’s angle changing. Strangely, that didn’t happen with this one. It appeared suddenly and just . . . stayed. And stayed. And held its color so vibrantly that it almost created a mirror image of itself bleeding outward from the strip of purple (the screenshot almost captured the effect; if you squint your eyes you might see a hint of the inverse rainbow edging off towards the right).

The other feature that made this rainbow feel so miraculous was the sustained bright glow it brought to the world—so sustained it felt like time had been suspended. In fact, as it went on I actually found myself wondering How is this even possible? The sun has to have moved. We shouldn’t still be seeing this intensity of color and light, not if the sun is dropping towards the horizon. So . . . I can’t explain it. Maybe there’s an obvious scientific reason. But in my world, everything about this rainbow, other than the rainstorm that preceded it, was a miracle. A beautiful, unexpected gift out of the gray.

So, perhaps you’re wondering what this has to do with tomorrow’s inauguration. I bring up unexpected gifts out of the gray—and in particular, the symbolic promise that is a rainbow—to highlight the sheer miracle of this moment. Looking back over the past four years, plenty of what I feared—dreaded—from a Biden administration came true: the systematic attack on dissident speech via social media censorship, and the culture of silence it fostered; the attack on bodily autonomy and medical freedom through jab mandates, and the lost livelihoods and lives that inevitably followed; the government-led campaign for identity-based rights, advanced throughout our institutions, which pushed America further from its sacred ideal of equality under the law, edging us towards a two-tiered, ideologically-rooted system of (in)justice.

But that storm has passed. It was hardly an unremarkable one. In fact, it was more intense and ugly—and dangerous to our nation’s survival—than America has seen in decades. But a miracle happened—many, in fact. So I want to share a brief list of the few I will be celebrating tomorrow:

• Americans woke up—finally!! «happy dance»—to the scam of the marketing slogan “safe & effective.”

• Elon Musk bought Twitter/X and saved free speech. (Okay, slight hyperbole.)

• Normies started noticing the glow of Blue gaslight and asking obvious questions.

• Trump turned his head at the correct split second.

• J.D. Vance became Trump’s VP and masterfully refused to play the media’s game.

• My hero, Bobby Kennedy, joined forces with Trump to get them both elected.

• The “Progressive” power apparatus grew so bold, stretched too far, and mercifully collapsed under the spectacular weight of its righteous lies.

Four years ago I never would have believed tomorrow was possible. Everything felt stacked against America’s truth-tellers and justice-seekers struggling to challenge the rising authoritarians. But God is good. And miracles, like bold promising rainbows that appear suddenly out of dark storm clouds, do actually happen. So this January 20th, I won’t need an unexpected gift of grace to carry me through my day in peaceful contentment. Because the whole historical moment we’re living in now is, itself, the miracle. And it is filled with the wonder of what is possible, when the truth is told.