The Tribune

AT the funeral of his mother, a friend recalls twin dominant and intense emotions: sorrow and joy. Though he expected the former, the latter surprised him. As the organist played Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring, the intensity of the joy was a feeling of profound gratitude for his mother’s life and her devotion to him and her family.

These twins have attended many at the loss of a loved one. Gladness and pain are inseparable. Wendell Berry, the American novelist, poet, and environmental activist died this past August.

Writing in his novel Jayber Crow, he offered: “That grief should come and bring joy with it was not something I felt able, or even called upon, to sort out or understand. I accepted the grief. I accepted the joy. I accepted that they came to me out of the same world.”

We know that the price of love is grief. While some sublimate pain in healthier ways, some run from sorrow or deflect the pain in unhealthy ways, trying to avoid the natural rhythm of being human.

But grief, pain, and trauma come out one way or the other, affecting our bodies, minds and spirits. A late relative’s mother committed suicide when he was in his 20s. He had prevented a previous attempt. He did not, or perhaps could not, cry at her funeral. Nearly a year later, the rush of tears also poured into his glass of Scotch in a bar. This time, he could not control the tears.

We all live on the estate of joy and sorrow, the two states emanating from the same wellspring—the capacity to love. Joy and sorrow, like generosity and gratitude, are companions. They cannot exist without each other.

Joy is more than temporary happiness or short-term feelings of pleasure. It’s more than an emotional reaction to an external event or comfort. Joy is grounded in something more enduring, such as love or being awed by the natural world. Joy persists because it’s connected to meaning beyond our limited selves.

Sorrow also contains a multitude: grief, sadness, hurt, regret caused by all manner of loss, heartbreak, disappointment, and painful experiences that leave us broken, damaged, fearful, grasping.

In On Joy and Sorrow, the poet Kahlil Gibran describes life as a property on which is mingled summer joys and winter griefs.

“Then a woman said, Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow.

“And he answered:

“Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.

“And the self-same well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.

“And how else can it be?

“The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain. ...

“Some of you say, “Joy is greater than sorrow,” and others say, “Nay, sorrow is the greater.

“But I say unto you, they are inseparable.

“Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board.Remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.”

The birth of a child, one of our more exhilarating experiences and life events, is accompanied by pain of giving birth, fear, anxiety. There can be no separation of one from the other. Depending on the circumstances, a birth can be wrought with sorrow and emotional and psychic wounds for a family.

An unwanted pregnancy often produces joy we did not expect, including joy that’s manifested later in life when the unexpected child becomes a cornerstone of love.

The depth of love of a parent cannot exist without constant worry, which never leaves a committed parent. How many years did the Prodigal Son’s father keep watch for his wayward son? Months, years, decades, most of a lifetime? The banquet he throws for the returning son, is not for the son alone.

It’s a banquet and a lesson for his entire family, including the prodigal and the jealous, vex, brother. It contains lessons too for the neighborhood and village. Lessons in mercy, hospitality, forgiveness.

It’s also a story and lesson about finding and celebrating joy in the midst of heartbreak, sorrow, and grief.

Don’t think for a moment that the father did not have times when he was angry and pissed with the prodigal. But that longing sorrow for his son kept him “waiting with a longing heart” so that the latter could be redeemed and that joy could cometh again in his son’s life.

Before we get too angry with the prodigal’s brother, might we not empathize with him? He was right to be angry at how much his brother had wasted his share of the inheritance and how much grief he had caused their father.

Surely, the brother needed a good cussing out, not a banquet. Still, the faithful son also needed to release his anger, his sorrow, and his disappointment in order to experience the joy of the return of his brother and his new promise.

We should remember that there are those prodigals who return and leave again, including those clouded by resentment, addictions, and other maladies of the soul. Some never return or do not return for long. Yet it’s our very sorrow and our hopeful joy for their return that leaves us open to genuine reconciliation.

Gibran asks:

“When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.

“When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.”

The joy that often triumphs over sorrow are the companion virtues of gratitude and generosity. Gratitude lifts us from many a pain and a colony of regrets. Generosity moves us beyond our negativity borne of deep disappointments, terrible mistakes, and self-absorption.

Constant and crippling negativity is sometimes a studied conceit, a form of pride and arrogance, refusing to adopt new habits and mindsets that move us beyond our self-isolation. We have the power to find joy in the midst of sorrow!

Just like other estates, the estate of joy and sorrow requires mindfulness, seeding, attention, tending, and pruning. We are, Gibran insists: “... suspended like scales between...sorrow and... joy,” requiring endless balancing throughout a lifetime. 

The older we grow, joy and sorrow tend to come with greater force and easier tears. We celebrate a birthday with friends. We know that the delight of the champagne or whatever libation with which we toast, will not last.

Yet how can we better savor the libation, including the libation of friendship, creating new memories and joy even as our frail bodies fail us, our loved ones pass, and our final days approach?

For the Christian, the cross is the ultimate estate of joy and sorrow. The passion and resurrection of the crucified Christ brings new life out of death.

We too can find new life and joy even as sorrow surrounds and penetrate hearts and souls, ultimately made for love—the ground on which the estate is found.