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come, the still-joys

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He laughs now, this rolling plump of a babe. Chortles like a chuckling gentleman when I tickle under his chin.

The laughter is intoxicating; we are all addicted. His doting brothers swarm the changing table for a chance to coax out another.

In the instant when his round eyes brighten and his soft mouth opens to laugh, I am swept inside. Everything becomes this moment: joy that totalizes.

As soon as the moment evaporates, I come back to present and realize:

Once upon a time I did not believe I would feel the pure shine of happiness again.

What grace of a second chance. What gift from grief.

The still-joys.

. . .

The world is a wasteland, again and always. If you only trust the headlines and the handwringers.

Meanwhile most of us go on, quietly doing the unnoticed work that underpins everything. Emails and deadlines. Laundry and dishes. Building and mending. Helping and forgiving.

My mother used to tell me that every generation was convinced it was the worst, it was the last. Wisdom is the comfort that keeps us going, hopeful and humbled.

Perhaps we are nearing the end; perhaps we are not. It will not change what we are about.

Trying to choose mercy and love tenderly and walk humbly with our God of justice. Failing every day, rising each dawn to hope anew.

Advent has come again, steady as seasons for two thousand years. We need the poor weak wailing Christ child again as we need him always, crying to us from the dirt and dung of a rough farm barn in a foreign land.

He wants what we want – food and love – but he will nourish and nurture us with himself in turn. The ultimate, divine difference.

We pull the figures from the creche box, small enough for smallest hands, and I marvel that we think we can contain Incarnation at all, let alone call it a set. As if it were complete. As if we could collect and control it, then tuck it away till another convenient moment.

When the truth should be smashing through boxes and boundaries year round, shuddering with the power we pretend to display, that God could come among us, that God is With-Us (which is everything, and nothing we can comprehend).

Yet these are still-joys, too. Small and so simple we forget to mention.

To pull out tradition from where we tucked it away.

To let ritual remind us we are part of longer stories than our own sinful sputters and starts.

To take pleasure in beauty for beauty’s sake, the soul’s instinct that one way to welcome Love is to clear out what is plain and tired, to set shine the brightest we have to sparkle against the darkness, if only for a short season.

These are the quiet-joys. Not the garish glare of commerce which blinds our eyes and dulls our palate, fools us into thinking we deserve more when most have none.

But softer moments: the flickering candle in winter dark, the gentle hymn in a hushed church, the small gift wrapped with thoughtful love.

Warmth waiting to shine and sing and share a treasure of good in the name of God.

. . .

Advent is a New Year, after all. Living counter culture as we do in church.

So I resolve to make mine this. I will not let grief steal my joy. I will not let despair dull my hope.

I will bring to my family and my work and our world any quiet-joy I can carry, given for sharing. (Delightful the ease when we learn to offer a gift never of our making.)

Come, still-joys.

Come, still-hope and faith and mercy. The truths turned trite only when we cease to practice them daily.

He came to bring us life abundant, that forgotten stable child. He came to rend the world inside out for justice. He came to forgive what we did not think possible (which was us).

And he brought us grace, which is the still-joys.

Which is everything worth living.

. . .

Once upon a time, in an ill-advised, off-hand moment of maternal desperation, I proclaimed with frustration that If Ever (because surely never) The Children Could Go Through An Entire Meal Without Reminders About Table Manners, then we would get Dairy Queen to celebrate.

(The most mundane, midwestern of bribes.)

Of course they tried and failed, tried and despaired, tried and almost made it to the end.

But we are all letter-of-the-law legalists about certain rules, so I dug in my heels. I would not dole out sweet whips of soft ice cream, overpriced and oversugared, unless all children in the household practiced perfect manners for one whole meal.

And then lo. On the last eve of the liturgical year, boxes of Christmas trappings already tugged from the basement and tumbled across the living room, they did it.

The wave of good will had been swelling for a week, as the oldest brother remembered the ancient offer, grew inspired with a gleam in his eye and a firmness in his tone, reminding his younger siblings at the start of each meal that This Could Be The Night of Nights.

Was it perfect and impeccable? Decidedly not. But it was so deeply good and delightful and of course unstoppable, that against our better judgment and best-laid plans, the young were declared victorious and piled into the van with the joy of wriggling puppies.

Hot fudge sundaes were carried home high. We slurped and spun spoons in the warm chocolate goo. As I looked around the table at these shining beloved faces, smeared with smiles, I could taste the gift of ending and beginning in sweetness.

A still-joy all its own.

The quiet joys are where we return, what makes grief-darkened years lighten as we welcome back the soft steps of what once was and what might be now.

Today starts anew. Advent fresh but ordinary at home. The children will eat with their hands and talk with mouths full; I will lose my temper and forget to forgive. It will be the same story we have told for ages.

But the baby will laugh with the clear chuckle that erases grief for a good instant, foretasting the forever-great of what comes next. We will remember the night we ate DQ because grace is unmerited.

The still-joys are still thick around us, eternal as the pressing dark of the winter, the worry, and the world.

Advent has come again, with still-joys for quiet hearts. Thank God and grace for that.

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Comments

  1. Claire says

    3 December 2017 at 7:00 am

    Such a great Advent reminder. I completely agree that the little moments have potential for joy if we slow down enough to savor them. Every time I mourn the loss of my son’s babyhood, I can rejoice in the joyful moments that come with his current age. When I mourn his lack of siblings, I can rejoice in the beautiful moments that crop up during our one-on-one time. This life on earth is full of losses which deserve to be grieved and acknowledged, but you are right that we should not let them steal our joy.

    Reply
  2. Kate Wear says

    3 December 2017 at 10:07 am

    One of my favorite reads! Thank you for the simple reminders

    Reply
  3. Beth says

    10 December 2017 at 1:26 pm

    This feels almost too beautiful to add my own stray comment, but just a thank you for inviting me to see the beauty in the sweetness of little ones even though they stretch us and even though we carry our own wounds. Your faith gives me strength! May your wounds continue to heal in His arms.

    Reply
  4. Maureen says

    26 December 2017 at 6:32 am

    I love the notion of “quiet joy.” A good reminder that joy doesn’t have to be big and loud to matter. Thank you for that reminder!

    Reply

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I’m Laura Kelly Fanucci. Mother, writer, wonderer. This space is where I explore mothering through writing. It’s where I celebrate how God shows up in the chaos of raising children. It’s where I love to build community with readers like you. Read More…

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thismessygrace

thismessygrace
Nearly 20 years ago (!) these crazy kids graduated Nearly 20 years ago (!) these crazy kids graduated from Notre Dame. Now we’re thick in the midst of life-with-kids, celebrating middle school & preschool & everything in between. 
 
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To enter the giveaway, follow @grottonetwork and @thismessygrace and leave a comment below about what you’re celebrating this month. Tag a friend for extra entries (up to 3).
 
Rules: Open to the U.S. only. Entries will be accepted until 6/11/22 at 11:59 pm CT. The 2 winners will be chosen at random and announced on 6/12/22. Per Instagram rules, this promotion is in no way sponsored, administered, or associated with Instagram, Inc. By entering, entrants confirm that they are 13+ years of age, release Instagram of responsibility, and agree to Instagram's terms of use.
“How did you do this?” I want to ask her. “H “How did you do this?” I want to ask her. “How did you let your heart break a thousand times?”

I want to call my mother and ask her impossible questions, to probe her heart that held five children and let each of us go in the hardest ways. But I know what she will say, “It’s hard. But you’re doing a beautiful job.” She can’t give words to the deepest yearnings and groanings. None of us can.

I wish I could ask my grandmothers, each of them gone for decades now, each of them matriarchs who raised big broods of their own. I never got to know them as an adult, but I have heaps of questions: How did you do it? How did you not lose yourself or your way? Or did you, and that was precisely the point?

I want a whole book of answers to impossible questions, and none exists. So I send my thoughts to the mothers of faith whose short stories, mere snippets on pages, have sparked small lights to guide me along. To Sarah and Ruth, Hagar and Rachel, Mary and Elizabeth. Every unnamed anguish the holy ones carried, every treasure of love they held in their heart.

Is it any coincidence that birth often brings both cries and screams, laughter and joy?

We hold it all within us. We cannot give words to the enormity of what it means to mother.

I sit outside a coffee shop two blocks from my children’s school on a sunny afternoon, the last day of the year. I wipe away tears for the natural nostalgia, but I also feel the gutting grief welling up from my own wounds of motherhood to know a deeper truth: marking milestones with love and longing is nothing compared to the gaping loss of not having your child here to break your heart in a thousand tiny ways.

So I resolve again, a hundred times again, to let this vulnerability become the strength that keeps me fighting for all children to have what I want for my own: life, love, health, safety, support, opportunity, community, hope. This is how parenting asks us to change. To let the particulars of our lives stretch us to love more widely.

I once thought “to mother” meant to have and to hold.

Now I know it also means to let go.
Many of you asked me to save these suggestions I s Many of you asked me to save these suggestions I shared after the school shooting in Uvalde.

Remember: we can’t do everything, but we can each do something.

Just because we can’t eradicate evil overnight doesn’t mean we can’t take small strong steps toward change.

Any work for justice and peace is long and hard. But we can build this work into our daily lives in concrete ways.

Look at the children in your life. What would you do to keep them safe and alive?

Start there. Let your life and love lead you.
When women meet, the world changes. Today is the When women meet, the world changes.

Today is the Feast of the Visitation. A day when we remember the meeting of Mary and Elizabeth.

Two women pregnant with new life, blooming with prophetic power.
Two mothers called to change the world.

What would happen if we gathered together like this today?
How could the world change if we made Mary’s song our own?

“He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.”
(Luke 1:51-53)

Imagine if we stayed in this holy space—not for a moment’s meeting, but for months together—to gestate the dreams God was waiting to birth through us.

Imagine if we let ourselves be filled with the Holy Spirit to shout out with loud cries.
Imagine if we lifted our souls with prayers of justice and joy.

Imagine if we gave each other strength and service, courage and compassion, as we kept asking how to answer God’s call in our ordinary lives.

When women meet, the world changes.

If you want to know how to fight for justice for your children, for your people, for this world, look to the Visitation.

The mothers will show us the way. They already have.

(Image from the “Windsock Visitation” by Br. Mickey McGrath, OSFS, commissioned for the Monastery of the Visitation in north Minneapolis.)
Here’s what I wish I would have heard preached t Here’s what I wish I would have heard preached today on the Ascension.

Right now is a time to be prophetic and pastoral, a time for each of us to ask how God is calling us to act.
I am writing this to us next week. When our right I am writing this to us next week.

When our righteous anger will have quieted down. When the white-hot fury pulsing through our veins will have subsided. When the news cycle will have moved on.

Do not forget how we felt tonight.
Stay angry. Flip tables.

We cannot live like this. Literally—our children are dying. Our elders are being murdered. We have accepted violence as—a way of life? An unfortunate side effect of freedom? A helpless shrug?

No. I am not resigned.
Stay angry. Flip tables.

Remember how it felt today to hear the news and feel the world crack open—again, for we have heard it a hundred times now. Remember how you felt sick to your stomach. How the children around you glowed, alive and fragile, miraculous and vulnerable.

Remember how you wanted to do something, anything, how you wanted to act, how you wanted to stop and scream for it to end, how every cell in your body cried out that this was evil and unjust and horrific and cannot continue.

Press into that memory like a bruise.
Stay angry. Flip tables.

The only way anything changes is if we change. Change what we believe. Change who we support. Change how we vote. Change where we give. Change how we act. Change how we speak. Change how we pray.

There are no easy answers to terrible, complex problems—which is what gun violence in the US has become. But the lack of easy answers makes it all the more urgent and vital that we press into our righteous anger and say NO MORE.

Stay angry. Flip tables.

I am writing this for us, for tonight, for next week. And I never want to write it again.
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