Delight

Take delight in the Lord,
    and he will give you the desires of your heart.
Psalm 37:4
 
How can we be joyful in a moment like this? Ross Gay responds “How can we not?” Poet, writer, community gardener (Bloomington community orchard), professor of English at Indiana University, he trains his gaze to see the wonderful alongside the terrible, attends to and meditates on what he loves, even in the midst of difficult realities and as a part of working for justice. I have recently been reading Gay’s The Book of Delights, his marvelous volume of essays written daily over the course of a difficult year. He writes as a bi-racial man, attuned to the complexity of living in America, calling for joy and inviting his readers to NOTICE, to practice, to think and write about delight every day: 
 
“It didn’t take me long to learn that the discipline or practice of writing these essays occasioned a kind of delight radar. Or maybe it was more like the development of a delight muscle. Something that implies that the more you study delight, the more delight there is to study. A month or two into this project delights were calling to me: Write about me! Write about me! Because it is rude not to acknowledge your delights, I’d tell that that though they might not become essayettes, they were still important, and I was grateful to them. Which is to say, I felt my life to be more full of delight. Not without sorrow or fear or pain or loss. But more full of delight. I also learned this year that my delight grows—much like love and joy—when I share it.”
 
As far as I know, Ross Gay is not a follower of Jesus but his exhortation to cultivate delight is very much in line with the Psalmist David’s “Take delight in the Lord”, an answer to the problem of what is to become of evil and evildoers. Focus on the ways that God is visible and revealed in this world, risk delight in the face of the hard things before us. And God will be found. And the Kingdom will come on earth, as it is in heaven. 

Grace and peace,
Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation