Perfect Joy

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