ISBC 23 - Hope Enters the Body Through Joy
Chapter 23 of Hope: A User's Manual
One of the things that I dearly love about my family is that we know how to have fun. There have been a series of video games on various consoles over the years that have brought crazy amounts of laughter to us - Sonic Racing, one we call Squishy Fight, Portal 2 co-op, and currently Chicken Horse. There are some stories to be shared from those games. But beyond video games, we find other ways including a toy pig with an “interesting” noise that terrorized the house late one evening about a month ago, playing board games, or finding unique places to get photos together. One such photo happened as I was driving my son to his summer internship.
As we passed a tire shop, we both saw this car as we went by. Immediately, both of our minds went to the 1980 movie The Blues Brothers, where Jake and Elwood Blues (played by John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd) go on a musical odyssey across the Chicago area to raise money for an orphanage. (If you have not seen this movie, you owe it to yourself to do so - hysterical and also some of the best music in a movie ever.Truly one of the best road trip soundtracks). Their car is an old police car that’s “got a cop motor, a 440 cubic inch plant, it's got cop tires, cop suspensions, cop shocks. It's a model made before catalytic converters so it'll run good on regular gas.” (Here’s the link to watch this scene because it is so much better heard and seen rather than read). The car becomes the new Bluesmobile.
Back to the photo - My son and I saw this car that was clearly newer than that 1974 Dodge from the movie but still it was an old police car. We snickered about it for a block until I asked, “Do you think we should turn around to get a photo with the car?” As we passed the second block, he said, “I think so” and then a left turn was made, a turn-around in a random driveway and then back to get this photo. Why? No other reason than it was funny and we could send it to the rest of the family with the line, “So, is it the new Bluesmobile or what?”
We got the photo, hopped back in our car, and resumed heading to our destinations.
But that’s the thing - sometimes you just need to do something like this for no other reason than it is fun, goofy, and silly. And even as I write about it a few weeks later, it still brings a smile to my face and joy to my heart (that I’m literally feeling in my heartspace as I’m typing this). Several quotes from this chapter speak to this:
Laughter, joy, play—these are essential for cultivating hope.
Laughter and joy are often the first things to go when everything hits the fan. After the recent pandemic, a pastor friend commented that his congregation desperately needed to play together but seemed too wrung out to do so. He worried they had forgotten how.1
One of the things that I wish about the Jesus stories in the Gospels is that the writers included stories of Jesus and the disciples goofing off, playing pranks, making jokes, etc. I am sure there were such moments but they are lost to time. I think it would make a big difference in how we engage faith - that it isn’t always needing to be so so so serious but instead we can laugh at ourselves, we can do things just because they’re fun, and we can see the joy that is in life.
There are moments in the TV show The Chosen which depict moments like this such as when they all run into one of the Sea of Galilee and start splashing each other following two of Jesus miracles (the healing of the bleeding woman and of Jairus’ daughter). It is a beautiful scene. Again, I wish the Gospels told of moments like this.
May you find some time today to just go splash in the water, get a photo with what might be the next Bluesmobile, or simply find some way that hope can enter your body through joy.
Grace, Peace, Love, and Joy,
Ed
McKibben Dana, MaryAnn. Hope: A User's Manual (pp 102-103). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Kindle Edition.
I originally wrote this post about a month ago and goodness did I need the reminder of it this morning. There's nothing wrong with seeking to find places of joy and laughter in the midst of the stresses that our world is bringing right now. So now, maybe more than ever, find that place to splash in the water, find the next Bluesmobile, or some other way to let hope enter your body through joy.
One thing that stirs for me as I write this today is going back to a baptism we did for a 1 yr old boy named Mateo a few Sundays ago. After I did the actual baptism and was sharing the blessing prayer for him, the little dude just kept reaching back down to the water and wanting to just splash his chubby hands in the water. I'd lean him over to splash and then bring him back up to continue the prayer and then he's reach back down towards the water. And we did that pretty much after every line of the blessing. He continued his joy filled baptism by clapping and laughing as the congregation clapped. It was beautiful, joy-full, and hope-full.
In catching up on both the book and these posts, I am writing this in mid-August, the week in which Tim Walz became Kamala Harris's running mate. I've seen so many people post about how they fill hope for the election and our country again and they credit the joy of this campaign with that feeling. Harris herself has talked about joy on the campaign trail. That is what I thought of as I a read this chapter.