Dark Joy

 

“Stepping deeper,

 

into the darkness,

 

closer to the light.”

                                                                                    Bruce Cockburn

 

 

There are some things that are just not what they are cracked-up to be. Popular knowledge, just like common knowledge, is off the mark. Delusion is better informed. What do I mean? Well, for instance, going toward the light means that it gets brighter all the way. Right. But somethings, like joy, are not at all linear or predictable. Something else is at play. There is a waywardness to the advent of joy that can be breathtaking, for its unpredictability, and its irascible nature.

 

Joy seems to be predominantly a product of aging. There is something about surviving a long time, combined with the vividness of Life, that seems to cook-up a quality of elation that many call joy. This a wonderful experience, though I would submit a lesser form of joy. Joy that isn’t the product of surprise and doubt isn’t all that joyful. It is the scale of uncertainty that adds intensity to joy.

 

Dark joy is the kind that exceeds expectations, seems improbable, and follows suffering, misery, and uncertainty. One’s happiness is blemished, by memories that contain demonic and overwhelming forces. Dark joy is like the sun burning through storm clouds. It is the clouds, in part, that make the moment blaze so. Dark joy is marked, scuffed up by unexpected trials, the hardships that give grace its luminosity. Dark joy arises when all is lost and somehow you are still standing.

It is filled with irrationality.

 

All joy is blessing, but dark joy is a special blessing. Touched by the predacious darkness, this joy is strangely refined, bearing scars that convey the hostility of wild and incorrigible change. It has come through a difficult passage, and in doing so, has revealed another way. It is a joy that conveys something of the promise we bear. It isn’t a passive blessing, it wears a shiny luminosity, that conveys the miracle of perseverant action. Dark joy is what rises through the soil, brutal as all birth. It is the convulsion that bears fruit.

 

There hasn’t been a way to celebrate what comes to us out of the darkness. But maybe, dark joy will change the pattern. Unbridled joy! Run amok, tipping over our expectations, defying our conventions, releasing our wildness, allowing us to limp home. 

 

Dark joy oddly casts a light upon what is truly divine.