Today’s first reading includes one of my longtime favorite words in the English language: delight! For me, delight tastes like a juicy combination of joy, pleasure and satisfaction, infused with gratitude and awe and topped with a splash of playfulness. The poet and essayist Ross Gay, author of The Book of Delights puts it more succinctly: “Delight is the pleasurable evidence of connection.” When I first read this in the height of pandemic lockdown in 2020, I remember thinking, That’s IT. In a moment within which nothing felt certain, when fear abounded, and loving people looked like physical distance from them, delighting in everyday beauty was my soul’s antidote.
I should not have been surprised, of course, walking on the lakefront or through forest preserves, that delighting in simple wonders would offer me healing. For many years, my capacity for delight has served as a sort of litmus test for my groundedness. When I have felt closest to Self, delight, wonder, and gratitude have come easily and felt warm and true. When I expect to be delighted—surprise, surprise—I am! Whenever, on the other hand, I have found myself unable to be satisfied—when I am “un-delight-able,” so to speak—God has seemed to be nudging me, letting me know that my spirit is a bit out of whack at the moment.
I’ve written much over the years about the delights I have experienced—from my parents’ faces to my favorite musicals, from my educational experiences as a student to living my vocation alongside my own students, from the redwoods of Yosemite to the churches of Italy, from my dinner table to the delivery room with my newborn. I have even enjoyed my own little Instagram campaign of sorts, #KDLookingUp, then #KDCLookingUp, a space in which I’ve shared pictures of daily delights. My bestie Mary Oliver beckons year after year, “Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.”
And still…human-made climate change fueled by rampant greed leads to fires that destroy forests and cities. The Israeli government continues to decimate Palestine with massive support from government officials I helped elect. Billionaires and politicians join forces to protect their own wealth and power while poor and marginalized individuals and groups wait in fear for a potentially catastrophic change in leadership. Uncertainty and fear raise their voices around and within me again. My soul aches for “the pleasurable evidence of connection,” even as my brain spins with anxiety and my jaw clenches with righteous rage, and my spirit fluctuates between wanting desperately to participate in solutions and wanting to take a nap.
Today’s readings offer consolation, as Trito-Isaiah exclaims, “I will not be silent…I will not be quiet, until her vindication shines forth like the dawn and her victory like a burning torch…You shall be called ‘My Delight’...for the LORD delights in you…and so shall your God rejoice in you.” Then Paul’s letter to the Corinthians reminds us that the Spirit delights in the unique gifts with which She empowers each of us. And in John’s Gospel, Jesus does not let the reality of Roman oppression stop him from delighting in a wedding celebration with some friends and the good wine!
The Jesuit spiritual teacher and writer Anthony de Mello writes, “Behold God beholding you…and smiling.” Though God does not take away our real pain and chaos, we are reminded again today that God abides with us in it, delighting in us and gifting us with the capacity to delight in the world God continues to make.
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