UK & US. I would say something similar, but I would probably read it in this way. Choir singers heart rates synchronize; musicians playing the same riff have brain waves that line up. But whats most remarkable is what happens after these festivities. There can be complaint, but you're spending a lot of energy just trying to hold it together. 5. Part of HuffPost Black Voices. Fernando Pessoa One of the ways it does this is by affirming our humanity. Wolves howl together after a hunt. I could not help but hear Nehemiah encourage his people to rebuild by saying that the joy of the Lord is your strength when they were being oppressed by a brutal and ruthless power. "Find ecstasy in life: the mere sense of living is joy enough." Emily Dickinson 2. Willie Jennings: Yeah. "Go find your joy. History month and why rewriting history to exclude the African American's place in it is so perfidious, its founder said it best, "If a race has no history, if it has no worthwhile tradition, it becomes a negligible factor in the . "Secondary choices are always subordinate to a primary choice. 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. You can build walls all the way to the sky and I will find a way to fly above them. Shocked that the man would trade something so essential to his survival, Wiesel asked him, Hanukkah in Auschwitz? And the man replied, Especially in Auschwitz.. It takes hold of them. We're talking about people entering a space and in some very powerful way that we can't really chart out specifically. In context where your energies have to be focused on survival, it doesn't leave a lot of energy for overt forms of complaint. I also like, as I love to say, I'm making productive use of pain and suffering in the absurd, not in order to take them lightly, but to take them very seriously, but not to make them gods. is one of the defining moments in modern punk and, with any justice, will stand as a testament to the working classes of the world and prove that new rock music is still being produced that can reach into your chest, tear out your heart-and then give you a great big hug that makes you feel like everything might . Willie Jennings: As I like to say, I'm a child of the church. We can be fluid, flexible when we have to be. Albert Einstein A thing of beauty is a joy forever: its loveliness increases; it will never pass into nothingness. 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. It's clear that joy is the crown of the good life, as Miroslav Volf has said. The church, the hospital room, the barber shop and beauty shopsthings are going to be better". What would be great is if we start to think more intentionally about how such spaces are constituted and how might such spaces, the constitution of such spaces be a fundamental part for those of us who are Christian in our discipleship. Reply Helpful. And here I'm not thinking primarily about African-American or African diaspora communities, but I'm thinking about the way in which multiple communities, their joy is inside of a hard segregation. To make injustice the onlymeasure of our attention is to praise the Devil. Even in the rebellious punk rock subculture, misogyny was rampant. What would that space look like for you? Like Romeo, Juliet sees love as a kind of freedom, "boundless" and "infinite.". Every morning, you wake up, and your mind tells you it's too early, and your body tells you you're a little too sore, but you've got to look deep within yourself and know what you want and what you're striving for." The first chimp to spot the caretaker begins hooting loudly. Suddenly its not scary or shameful to call yourself a feminist. But when you see mounds of hot pink trash bags piled on a curb, it offers a striking, yet not aggressive, reminder to be less wasteful. That's why the narrator is able to say of this third Ofglen, "of course she is" Ofglen. Like water, we mostly follow the path of least resistance., I had no real communication with anyone at the time, so I was totally dependent on God. Some of the containers holding the archives were dug up from . He had a way of speaking that made you feel like magic. "That's the heart of rock 'n' roll, that's its . Black joy is also important for representation. She abruptly ended their interview . Rated #20 in the best albums of 2018, and #2063 of all time album.. As a Christian pastor, I could not help sense that I was bearing witness to the embodiment of Isaiahs prophecy that you have turned my mourning into dancing, my sorrow into joy. This week, with one year to go until the next U.S. presidential election, it seemed a good time to dig in and share a kind of blueprint for the intentional use of joy to foster change. What are spaces in which you yourself find joy? "Oh, the Spirit's coming." Thank you so much for the kind words, Helen! Remember. Update on December 22, 2015 by Pastor Jack Wellman. I remember people handing flyers to the guy I was with and not to me as if I werent autonomous, or men saying things to me like, youve got a really good record collection for a girl. As I became more aware, I found myself influenced by girls and women who were challenging the existing power structure of rock n roll. Stories are told, jokes are told, people walk in, comments are made, and without you being spoken to directly, you've been spoken to. These women have shown me what strength, determination, compassion and accountability look like and taught me to not take no s**t from anybody (lol)! 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." Resistance creates suffering. Its a curious feature of autocratic regimes that forms of joy are often banned. This is joy for our time. Willie Jennings: Despair and all of the ways that despair wants to drive us toward death, and wants to make death the final word. We're passionate about making this work consistently accessible to people who are genuinely concerned about the viability of faith in a world racked with division, contested views about what it means to be human, and what it means to live life well. Thanks so much for sharing. As I like to say, Christians, we are geographically adrift. "The path of least resistance is what makes rivers run crooked." - Elbert Hubbard. The name "Ofglen" says nothing about who this woman really is; her only identity is as the Commander's property. 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. Joy is a sign of vibrant life, of thriving. "Resistance is the secret of joy." Alice Walker 20. Slowly but surely shes changing the lives of those she directly works with, while also helping to create legislation that ultimately will transform Colombias society into a somewhat more just and inclusive place. In a nation that denied our humanity, surrounded by neighbors who harbored hate for us in their hearts, our futures and our children's futures have perpetually been kept under the boot of the police state, our lives snatched away by a cop's pistol or the smack of a judge's gavel. We see kids and adults of color being attacked everyday for just living their lives. 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. Not enjoyment. Thank you! Founded by Ingrid Fetell Lee, we celebrate the power to create a happier, healthier world through design. The legacy of the Morrill Act is not only our great colleges and universities like Rutgers but the American tradition that merit and not money should give people a chance for a higher education. Segregated joy is most often sequestered joy, bounded joy territorially, in particular places. Oops! It's the parade . Your joy is an act of resistance. Since then, my ideas on empowerment and the Womens Rights Movement have definitely changed, but I still believe it is incredibly important for young girls to have strong female role models early in life. Visit faith.yale.edu/give. I suggest you look to some literary greats who not only captured the relevance and significance of the African American life but lived extraordinary experiences themselves like, Ida B. We also need moments of release and celebration to mark the small victories and restore body and mind. The suggestion that Juliet will "give" her "bounty" to Romeo is the most explicitly erotic moment in their conversation . Between the two stands Resistance.. Anne K. Ream is the founder of The Voices and Faces Project, a global storytelling project, the author of "Lived Though This: Listening to Sexual Violence Survivors," and a Founding Co-Chair at World Without Exploitation, the national coalition to end human trafficking and sexual exploitation. Take this 3-minute quiz and find out. JOY is an act of resistance. There's also the Black Joy movement, sprouted alongside Black Lives Matter, which celebrates the happiness,. People who love in a world without walls, people who love into hate, into refusal, against hope, and without fear. Prolonged states of heightened negative emotion raise blood pressure, cortisol, and respiration rate, putting stress on the cardiovascular system. We don't think spatially as we should. I get to have all that no matter how ugly things look. It takes something for joy to be brought forth, and I love that youre standing from this viewpoint. Reclaiming those sources of joy is a way to refuse to be dehumanized, to reassert our vitality. (More on this form of joyful activism here.). Miroslav Volf: What is joy for you as a theologian, as a church men, as a black man? Stop. Men told you what to listen to, what to like. By entering your email and clicking Sign Up, you're agreeing to let us send you customized marketing messages about us and our advertising partners. 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.. Whether its the transcendent joy of sacred ritual or the simple joy of cultivating a garden, the pursuit of joy amid great struggle is a way to tend our humanity when it is most threatened. We're grateful that you're listening. It goes against everything that racism was designed to do. Joy in that regard is a work, that can become a state, that can become a way of life." A genuine leader will never exploit your emotions or your pocketbook. It's a parade of my Grandfather's wit, it is all the shit haircuts I've ever had. $j("#connectPrompt").show(); In this live workshop series, you'll learn evidence-based strategies to reclaim your joy and create a life you love. Acceptance and support is what encourages Autistic kids like Knox to advocate for themselves. 20 of the best book quotes from The Path of Least Resistance. Thank you! Studies show, for example, that feeling joyful can mitigate something called the own-race face bias, where people tend to recognize differences in faces of their own race while failing to distinguish faces of other races from one another. Black joy, as an act of resistance against white supremacy, takes center stage on Juneteenth. Photo by Maria Baranova. They didn't have dreams of speaking other's language. Holocaust survivor and author Elie Wiesel described a memory of a fellow prisoner trading a ration of bread for materials with which to piece together a makeshift menorah during Hanukkah. Willie Jennings: Public rituals bound to real space. Other soldiers wrote home requesting flower seeds to plant. Wells and Zora Neal Hurston. Willie Jennings is Associate Professor of Systematic Theology, Africana Studies, and Religious Studies at Yale University; he is an ordained Baptist minister and is author of The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race,Acts: A Commentary, The Revolution of the Intimate, and most recently, After Whiteness: An Education in Belonging. Menu. For more information, visit us online at faith.yale.edu. Take, for example, The Singing Revolution: a four-year series of protests involving mass singing demonstrations that swept across Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia between 1987 and 1991, eventually leading to their independence. 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. Are you going to have a good day or are you going to have a great day? abulabbas Dec 27, 2021. That's what's necessary. The rainbow pride flag is one example of a joyful symbol that both unifies activists while also disarming detractors. Somehow, by some great miracle, we followed his mothers lead, and it just happened. To be Black and joyful despite and against all the odds is an act of resistance. joy is an act of resistance $75.00 It is imperative to connect with joy and evolve our own personal practice of compassion. Joy, and celebrations in particular, focus our attention on our commonalities, not our differences. You can try to pin me down with a hundred thousand arms, but I will find a way to resist. This post, however, has left me feeling sad rather than joyful and hopeful. Rosa Parks stood up for her rightsshe actually didnt let the bus driver tell her what to do or abide by those rules and regulations about where she could sitshe fought for justice, and thats why African Americans are now able to sit in the front of the bus at this moment. When psychologists study people engaged in communal singing, dance, or other rhythmic forms of entertainment, they find that we become connected on a physical level. Dr. Engram's "Black Joy as an Act of Resistance" takes the listener on a journey through the life of Black millennials. What happens when somebody walks into a space marked by joy? Rosa and Maya inspire me in my work. 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? I can only imagine it must have been extraordinary to hear him speak. People who love in a world without walls, people who love into hate, into refusal, against hope, and without fear. They have always showed me how to hold boundaries but still be loving and hopeful to someone. }); Barbara Ehrenreich notes that in South Africa among the Namaquas, it was said that someone who converted to Christianity had given up dancing.. 13. For more information, visit faith.yale.edu. a piece on the power of the garden at Rikers Island. Tricia Hersey, Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto. The reverse is also true that the secret of joy is resistance. Thats right, dancing. It is one the things that makes us truly human. Joy is an act of resistance. This is the joy of resistance. When you think about why everyone should celebrate Black History month and why rewriting history to exclude the African American's place in it is so perfidious, its founder said it best, "If a race has no history, if it has no worthwhile tradition, it becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the world, and it stands in danger of being exterminated." By Crystal Fields-Sam Author Cheryl Strayed writes in her book Wild about how her mother made a choice everyday to find peace, even when things were difficult. 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. Rest Is Resistance Quotes Showing 1-30 of 84. 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. Yet, as the onslaught of trauma and terror continues to reek havoc on our communities both through the systematic racism of state violence and through the deeply internalized racism of gang violence, families and communities like the Smith and Myricks families in Northwest Pasadena point each of us of the power of joy. And there's something very powerful about a womb of joy that nurtures and helps constitute identity. She resisted violence and oppression by asserting her existence and that of those around her. I'm Evan Rosa with the Yale Center for Faith & Culture. We are proud to share this second installment of reflections in our Womens History Month series honoring womens roles in resisting oppression and advancing social justice. I want our guests to know that I love them and appreciate them. It wouldn't be easy to find her, now. 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. If someone puts their hands on you make sure they never put their hands on anybody else again., We live in capitalism. This is the joy of the Lord that is our strength. I am printing this post in order to keep the many good points at hand. For women, this has meant a suppression of the erotic as a considered source of power and information within our lives. The denigration of feminine forms of joy, such as romance novels and films, fashion and home decor, is another manifestation of this insidious form of repression. Joy is the serious business of Heaven. Wa-ching! The ones who will choose to journey with you through the fantastic & the foolish. It's our joy to bring these shows to you. 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. PTKF2158-5. Something went wrong while submitting the form. "For Black folks, joy and resistance aren't really that separate," Waheed tells me over Zoom. So, simply put, joy can be considered resistance because its a form of energy for change, as Lorde puts it. The lizard brain is hungry, scared, angry, and horny. I'm Evan Rosa, and I edited and produced the show. Willie Jennings: Yeah. We're grateful that you're listening to this podcast. In 2017, they formed the Resistance Revival Chorus, a collective of women and non-binary singers whose central tenet is that joy is an act of resistance. Nurtured by centuries of spiritual practices both in Africa and here in America, this a bold and prophetic act of resistance and defiance of a demonic force that seeks to kill you and to snuff out your joy. At one level, it is tied to real spaces and places. 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. What dictators know is that joy has a propulsive force, and that anything that gathers and channels that energy threatens to upend the rigid control of a population. Now that feels a bit closer to home in this era, a desire for something long ago, far away, about to be. Willie Jennings: To press even further, it could be that one thing under utilized by Christian intellectuals is precisely this latter reality that Jesus himself points us toward, a family that becomes reconfigure. Joy in that regard is a work that can become a state that can become a way of life. Miroslav Volf: They're slightly drunk, in any case. And there are so many silences to be broken.". "Joy does not simply happen to us. Essentially, hope is the belief that tomorrow can be better than today. For in that moment, he truly was. 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. Images: Joy is an Act of Resistance by @rayoandhoney on Instagram; Publicolor before and after courtesy of Publicolor; Trash Any Color You Like by Adrian Kondratowicz. There is a joy that draws peoples together rather than a joy that's built within segregated spaces. We need it as much as we need anger because it is joy that will help keep us in. 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