I think my new mission is Joy Restoration. We’ve all had Joy. I would even posit that it is our original state. We may have had it removed through the careful application of social ‘normalization’, religious indoctrination and enforced maturation. But we can return to our natural joy.
My wife and I were out for a walk yesterday and I got the idea when we were talking about a comment an old friend from college made to her at our wedding two years ago. My friend thanked her for ‘bringing him back’. Actually I was on my way back for a while, but my relationship with my wife has freed me to express all the silliness and enthusiasm that I wasn’t always feeling free to let out. Of course I hadn’t gone comatose, and by kids probably experienced more of my goofy, spontaneous personality because we’re ‘allowed’ to be that way with kids. But ‘putting away childish things’ as we are admonished in Corinthians, doesn’t mean lose the child-like qualities of inquisitiveness, imagination, humor and the space in which to create and are recreate our world, our image and our options continuously.
Back to Paul’s letter to Corinth for a minute, because it has application in our productive practice. Here is most of the last paragraph
When I was a child, I was speaking as a child, I was led as a child, I was thinking as a child, but when I became a man, I ceased these childish things. 12Now we see as in a mirror, in an allegory, but then face-to-face. Now I know partially, but then I shall know as I am known. 13For there are these three things that endure: Faith, Hope and Love, but the greatest of these is Love.
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