It is counter-intuitive in that regard. a : the inherent ability of an organism to resist harmful influences (such as disease, toxic agents, or infection) b : the capacity of a species or strain of microorganism to survive exposure to a toxic agent (such as a drug) formerly effective against it 3 : an opposing or retarding force 4 a Not enjoyment. And so the question becomes for me: can there be a form of joy that helps to constitute identity that happens in the in-between, in the gathering of different peoples? Barbara Ehrenreich notes that in South Africa among the Namaquas, it was said that someone who converted to Christianity had given up dancing.. To this point, Brown says, Part of the reason so few of us have a healthy relationship with pleasure is because a small minority of our species hoards the excess of resources, creating a false scarcity and then trying to sell us joy, sell us back to ourselves.. Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya's portraits in Times Square celebrating the expansive diversity and individuality of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in New York City as part of the public art series We Are More. Amplifying Black voices through news that matters. You have to have people who can show you how to sing a song in a strand land, laugh where all you want to do is cry, and how to ride the winds of chaos. Somehow, by some great miracle, we followed his mothers lead, and it just happened. The hooting spreads among the group, and the chimps begin to hug and kiss each other, with friendly body contact increasing as much as a hundredfold. Music is a common one. The ones that your heart recognizes in the light & in the dark. But, the reality of it is that I have been in spaces of joy in hospital rooms, gathered with a family and a loved one who's passing on, but there are rituals of remembrance going on, grief processes being begun, and in the midst of that, incredible joyjoy connected to sorrow. Founded by Ingrid Fetell Lee, we celebrate the power to create a happier, healthier world through design. In this live workshop series, you'll learn evidence-based strategies to reclaim your joy and create a life you love. Football coaches, mentors, family members and friends told story after story of how this young man had made a positive impact on their lives and how devastated they were to lose him. Societal change always involves a lot of pain as those with privilege and power often refuse to listen or take responsibility for the suffering theyve caused. Let us know what you're interested in. One of the ways it does this is by affirming our humanity. . In Trinidad, the British banned drumming. This is great! }); And then the second thing you have to have is a willingness to want to hold on to Life, even when there is very little that makes sense in life. My mother, and three sisters: Jean Cooper, Zwazzi Sowo and Lillian Mark! There's also the other ways in which space exists. It cannot., Humanism is the only - I would go so far as saying the final- resistance we have against the inhuman practices and injustices that disfigure human history., People don't resist change. C.S. But isn't difficulty, suffering, hardshiparen't these necessary conditions for joy to even take place? While communal joy represents an outright danger to a repressive regime, individual joy can also empower resistance. Aesthetics of joy can also disrupt complacency, drawing much-needed attention to a cause. Contributors control their own work and posted freely to our site. It reminds the teachers and students that they are fully human, fully worthy and deserving of a full and beautiful life. After a while, people just think oppression is the normal state of things. Chimps are extremely hierarchical, so whats notable about these celebrations is that they disrupt the typical hierarchy, prompting a more egalitarian mode of behavior. We uphold their memories as sacred before God. But in context where that isn't fully, hasn't fully taken hold, the people's work of creating joy is there. One of my favorite examples of this is a project called Trash: Any Color You Like, which placed vibrant, polka-dotted trash bags around the streets of New York City. 8. We can do without pleasure, but not delight. Local authorities often forbade or disrupted native rites, or at minimum made relinquishing them a condition of conversion. Genres: Post-Punk, Post-Hardcore. The more dehumanizing the circumstances, the more we need these markers of our humanity. But here I'm wondering: if there is not a Christological intervention that the life of Jesus draws us toward, that brings an invitationthat the very form of joy and pleasure and contentment and comfort that you imagine in the enclosed space can actually be something far richer, far more beautiful, far more pleasurable in this new space, in which your joy is constituted with some of the very people who you imagine are a part of your despair, not a part of your joyor those who you imagine their joy that is absolutely in what they find enjoyable is absolutely foreign to what I would. But fundamentally, that is built uponand I never want to draw too sharp a distinction between other kinds of spaces and that geographic spacewe really should start to attend to where do we find joy, where do we find joy. Every year African American History month has a new theme. And death in this regard is not simply the end of life, but it's death in all its signatures: death, violence, war, debtall the ways in which life can be strangled, and presented to us as not worth living. "Peace without justice is tyranny." - William Allen White. I began to realize this when I was studying animal celebrations. We also need moments of release and celebration to mark the small victories and restore body and mind. My pleasure. They work tirelessly to defend the rights and safety of sex workers in downtown Bogot and the broader LGBTQAI community who suffer not only from social stigma but also police brutality. Miroslav Volf: They're slightly drunk, in any case. Theres a deeper effect here too. In his poem, A Brief for the Defense, he writes: If we deny our happiness, resist satisfaction,we lessen the importance of their deprivation.We must risk delight. This exposure to the idea that girls are just as powerful and important as the boys next to them is how we continue to resist oppression and advance womens rights. Joy As An Act Of Resistance / - ( CD, Album) Partisan Records, Hostess Entertainment Unlimited. Even in the rebellious punk rock subculture, misogyny was rampant. Menu. Willie Jennings: Yeah, this is where I wonder out loud if the life of Jesus, a kind of Christological intervention, is what's necessary for us to re-conceive joy that opens us out rather than encloses. "For Black folks, joy and resistance aren't really that separate," Waheed tells me over Zoom. Her mother said, "There's always a sunrise and always a sunset and it's up to you to choose to be there for it. And when the horse drawn carriage with the bullet riddled body of her slain son passed by, someone from the family in the slowly driven car behind the carriage once again did something that I did not expect. [CDATA[ Funded by the John Templeton foundation, gathering a diverse group of scholars and practitioners, including theologians, philosophers, pastors, psychologists, the project sought to restore joy to the center of Christian reflection, and what it means to live a good life, a life worthy of our humanity. "If you want to be the best, you can't take the path of least resistance. She said she tries to acknowledge the difficulties that others might encounter in these unprecedented times while also caring for herself and those around her. There can be complaint, but you're spending a lot of energy just trying to hold it together. //]]>. Willie Jennings joins Miroslav Volf to discuss the definition of joy as an act of resistance against despair, the counterintuitive nature of cultivating joy in the midst of suffering, the commercialization of joy in Western culture, joy segregated by racism and slavery, how Jesus expands and corrects our understanding of joy. One example of this phenomenon is prison gardens. It's the idea that in order to be a good woman, you have to be self-sacrificing. She abruptly ended their interview . They moved the needle forward by challenging stereotypes in a very aggressive and sometimes shocking manner, forcing important gender issues to the forefront while demanding equality in how women were seen and treated. ", The commercialization of joy in the empire of advertisingcontrasting that with the peoples serious work of joy, The work and skill of making something beautiful out of what has been thrown away, Segregated joyjoy in African diaspora communities, Joy is always embedded in community logics, Geographies of joy: Christians tend not to think spatially, but we should, Hoping for joyous infection, where the space has claimed you as its own, Where can joy be found? At that moment, I witnessed the joy of a community that, even in mourning, knew that it had access to one of the most powerful tools of resistance to a system of state sponsored violence and oppression that seeks to crush the joyful spirits of vibrant communities like these. Is joy actually a form of resistance to oppression, or is this phrase just a comforting balm to counter the guilt we feel when we find ourselves feeling good in a world thats burning? Miroslav Volf: I'm here with Willie Jennings, a very good friend of mine. And we know thatand my own experience in churches is that that's often what happens, a kind of infection of joy. I thought it might give him something to look at, like the center of a house you keep coming back to . ("Joy of the Sabbath") and founded by historian Emanuel Ringelblum (1900-44). $grfb.init.done(function() { 5. If you're new here, please hop onto my email list so I can send you weekly emails full of GIFs (and also podcasts, articles, and generally amusing cheerleading for . This is the joy of resistance. Fundraising is the vehicle a worthy cause utilizes to traverse obstacles which would otherwise prevent it from being heard. Acceptance and support is what encourages Autistic kids like Knox to advocate for themselves. Every single person let the healing waves of music wash over them with their soulful and buoyant caress, and just danced their hearts out right where they stood. The suggestion that Juliet will "give" her "bounty" to Romeo is the most explicitly erotic moment in their conversation . Growing up, male domination was this constant, hovering blanket over every aspect of life. 2018. Produced by Space and mixed by Adam Greenspan & Nick Launay (Nick Cave, Kate Bush, Yeah Yeah Yeahs), Joy as an Act of Resistance. UK & US. Events may create physical pain, but they do not in themselves create suffering. PTKF2158-5. 119. by FANTANAMOBAY. This post was published on the now-closed HuffPost Contributor platform. Visit faith.yale.edu/give. And what we have to understand is it's precisely that kind of geographic dimension that we have to think about, if in fact we want to think beyond segregated joy. Your submission has been received! We are not attuned to a world in which we have to work with what's been thrown away because we are the ones who throw away. If someone puts their hands on you make sure they never put their hands on anybody else again., We live in capitalism. As a result, she was verbally pummeled, berated and called a feminazi (a total oxymoron). Thanks for listening. And that is: segregated joy is fundamentally a part of the reality of segregation, which means that it is a joy that in many instances is built on insult, is built on hatred of the other. Kathleen Hanna, like Marian, suffered from sexual abuse at a young age and used the stage to not only wrestle with her pain, but also to establish the riotgrrl movement. Joy lets us reclaim our humanity. There's a very powerful analogy to, if you will, the work of the spirit at that moment, that a space is created not by you, but in a strange sort of way without you knowing it, it's for you. My bounty is as boundless as the sea, My love as deep; the more I give to thee, The more I have, for both are infinite. Willie Jennings joins Miroslav Volf to discuss the definition of joy as an act of resistance against despair, the counterintuitive nature of cultivating joy in the midst of suffering, the commercialization of joy in Western culture, joy segregated by racism and slavery, how Jesus expands and corrects our understanding of joy. So when people. Jesus tells us to use joy as an act of rebellion when he says: "Love your enemy, bless the one who curses you, do something wonderful for the one who hates you, and respond to the very ones who persecute you by praying for them." (Matthew 5:44) Share joy by sharing love, which drives out fear, which leads to joy. Joy takes something that might be threatening to people, such as difference or otherness, and makes it less so. How on earth is anyone to find solace in the midst of such overwhelming grief? And because of that, we probably have to press more deeply when we start to talk about the integrity of a Christian vision of joy until we understand that dynamic. There were incredible women like Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth before the end of Slavery, the women making lunches and marching during the Civil Rights Movement, and the women of the Black Panthers supporting the social programs and keeping the organization running. I want our guests to know that I love them and appreciate them. The less you think about your oppression, the more your tolerance for it grows. So the cultural haunts and habitat of a people, this is where their joy is made known. If all control boils fundamentally to force, how can one resist aggression without equal force? Join our email list for theological and cultural commentary, educational resources, and more. Miroslav Volf: I don't know whether I'm maybe romanticizing things, but it seemed to me that from what I have observed growing up, but also when I have traveled, that I find more joy in the midst of oppression in almost paradoxical way, than I find in plenty. We're talking about people entering a space and in some very powerful way that we can't really chart out specifically. Austin Channing Brown Apr 26, 2020 20 "Joy is an act of resistance." - Toi Derricotte Sometimes people in the coffee shop offer to help me out, even though I tell them they dont have to, but when they do help I say to them, Hey, on fried chicken day, I got you.. Some of the containers holding the archives were dug up from . Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. How to reclaim freedom from all kinds of bullshit. The theologian Willie James Jennings said it better than we can: "I look at joy as an act of resistance against despair and its forces all the forces of despair." He said that in 2014, long . Seeing her and PARCES gives me hope for Colombias future. Associate Professor of Systematic Theology and Africana Studies, Yale Divinity School, Founder & Director, Yale Center for Faith & Culture, Defining joyan act of resistance against despair, "Resisting all the ways in which life can be strangled and presented to us as not worth living", Making productive use of pain, suffering, and the absurdtaking them serious. Lewis famously wrote in his autobiography, Surprised By Joy, "All joy reminds it is never a possession, always a desire for something longer ago or further away, or still about to be." referencing Joy As An Act Of Resistance (LP, Album, Deluxe Edition, 180 Gram, Gatefold) PTKF2158-3. And the Yale Center for Faith and Culture conducted a three-year study of joy and its connection to the good life. Put yourself in the way of beauty." To make injustice the onlymeasure of our attention is to praise the Devil. Posted on May 17, 2022 May 24, 2022 by Dilnwaaz Brey "Claiming joy is an act of freedom and power. The world has enough anger and fear to last for seventy lifetimes. However, I also found that some thoughts expressed seemed unnecessary and negatively pointed, producing uneasiness rather than joy. Like Romeo, Juliet sees love as a kind of freedom, "boundless" and "infinite.". At one level, it is tied to real spaces and places. And so what we have neglected is that joy is fundamentally tied to space. Lee's grandaughter, Dione Sims, who is also a civil rights advocate, has been helping her in the . This sleeve has quite a fragile wide spine. Nature, whether the wild forest or a manicured garden, has the power to soothe anxiety, reduce rumination, and restore the ability to focus. I believe in the magic and authority of words.. We see kids and adults of color being attacked everyday for just living their lives. And we'll be back with more next week. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. What's killing your joy? - Psalm 30:5. Ms. Reid had little patience for trading insults with Pastor Mark Burns, a frequent defender of President Trump, when he was a guest on her show last month. How can a truly free state exist if the individual citizen is enslaved to the forceful will of individual or organized aggressors? This year the theme is resistance. Willie Jennings: I look at joy as an act of resistance against despair and its forces, all the forces of despair. I dont know what she meant when she said that, but I know for me it means that I still get to have my joy, my laughter, my sassiness, my thinking, my love of people. When I think about the role of women in social justice, I immediately think of Black women. And there's something very powerful about a womb of joy that nurtures and helps constitute identity. As you can probably tell, now I don't spend much time in barbershops anymore, but back in the day when I used to spend time in barbershopsbarbershops and beauty shops are really interesting, especially in black communities, because they can be in ways that are, as I like to say, profound realities of indirection and they can be spaces of incredible joy. Suddenly its not scary or shameful to call yourself a feminist. But the most celebratory of all animals are our closest relatives, the chimpanzees. Thank you, Martha. We danced like Darius was right there with us. Prolonged states of heightened negative emotion raise blood pressure, cortisol, and respiration rate, putting stress on the cardiovascular system. Joy is the story of the title character, who rose to become founder and matriarch of a powerful family business dynasty. I plan to share it with my friends and families, just as I shared your book. Thats right, dancing. Im constantly moved and inspired by her passion to fight for underrepresented and marginalized people. But what does this phrase really mean? New Submission. The collective representation of Black people in the industry is abysmal, as evidenced by multicultural children's publisher Lee & Low's baseline survey. She poured her heart out on stage, she demanded that the men stand back so that women could literally and metaphorically come forward as she very bluntly called out misogyny. Joy is the serious business of Heaven. Hope is an elusive yet vital ingredient for activism. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. But another way that joy can support activism is that it disarms. (II.ii.) For activists, who live with chronic stress, the risk of burnout is physiological. For theological and cultural commentary, educational resources, and the Yale center for Faith and Culture conducted three-year. 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