This afternoon around 3:28 P.M., I snagged a seat near the
door in a humanities classroom for my weekly Senior Seminar course. It was an
average “fly by the seat of my pants” kind of day, running from class, to
meeting, to class again and about that time I was praying that I had read the
right material. It was theology, so if anything was going to help me, I figured
it would be prayer.
I had no idea that my
mind was about to be blown.
We were discussing the difference between happiness and joy
in regard to holiness (theology mumbo jumbo, I know) when my professor brought
up Francis of Assisi and his idea of perfect joy. She scanned the classroom,
surely one of the fifteen theology majors present had heard of perfect joy -- crickets.
After that Bueller moment, she gave up and told us. According to St. Francis,
perfect joy is when you are cold, starving, and wandering about when you come
to an inn. Someone opens the door, takes one look at you and says, “Go away.”
Perfect joy happens when suffering and being shut out no longer bothers you.
Now, I don’t know about you, but suffering does not equal
joy in my book and it took me a few minutes to really process what she said.
When I finally applied it to myself, the light bulb went off. Allow me to explain.
I have always identified as an ally and an activist. Growing
up in a same-sex household will do that to you, especially if you are a protective
daughter like I am. Throughout high school, if anyone had a negative thing to
say about my family, a fire lit under me and I raised hell. That hasn’t changed
one bit, but over the years I have learned to channel that passion – that
frustration - into advocacy and involvement.
This summer I had the honor of marching in the LGBT Pride
Parade in my hometown of Denver, Colorado. In that moment, when I was walking
down Colfax Street with 250,000 of my closest friends and allies, I felt an
overwhelming sense of joy. Joy that so many people would come out to support
our cause, joy that I was an important part of a major movement and joy that
the change we have been fighting for seemed certain to come. It is easy though,
to feel that joy and in that moment forget that the struggle still exists.
Class today helped me remember why we fight for social
change. We fight for what we believe in because we empathize with and/or experience
oppression. The struggle for human dignity in poverty, disability, disease,
racial and cultural discrimination, as well as sex and gender discrimination
should motivate us. Perhaps in this way I disagree with St. Francis in that
perfect joy shouldn’t be about being unbothered by cruelty and suffering even
if it is our own. That’s not to say he wasn’t motivated by suffering, he
obviously was. In this day and age however, I think we should absolutely be bothered by suffering,
whether it is social, civil or economic in nature. My perfect joy would be
feeling that tension, frustration, anger, hurt and resentment for myself or
others and being ignited by it.
No matter your cause, let it be a comfort that you have
everything you need to be an agent of change. Things that are hard for us to
witness and experience are often the things that shape us, but it is up to us
whether that change is positive or negative. Francis of Assisi is a Saint for a
reason. It is not in our nature to be unbothered – so be bothered and “go forth
and set the world on fire.”
Kindly,
Shayla Covington
President - Gender & Sexuality Alliance
