What do you think of when you hear these words:
Happiness?
Pleasure?
Joy?
Are they the same? Do they conjure the same thoughts, the same feelings, the same needs? Of these three, which would you most desire in your life?
The great writer and, dare I say, theologian, C.S. Lewis wrote time and time again about joy. Even his memoir is titled, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life. In it, he writes,
“Joy must be sharply distinguished both from Happiness and Pleasure. Joy (in my sense) has indeed one characteristic, and one only, in common with them; the fact that anyone who has experienced it will want it again … I doubt whether anyone who has tasted it would ever, if both were in his power, exchange it for all the pleasures in the world. But then Joy is never in our power and Pleasure often is.”
Just a couple weeks back, I wrote of the joy of those who work at Castel Gandolfo. I was amazed not by their happiness, not by their pleasure at being able to guide and assist, but by their sheer joy, a palpable exuding of something we simply cannot sustain here on earth.
How ironic that I now find myself immersed in the sentiment of joy once again as I read the delightful novel, Becoming Mrs. Lewis. While the story is meant to tell the love story of Joy Davidman and C.S. Lewis, what I find the most intriguing are the many ways Lewis finds and relishes those moments of joy.
And it makes me wonder… Read more
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