Resistance, Activism

Be Joyful? It Doesn’t Mean You’re Nuts, but More Free.

Be joyful! This is a call to delight in spite of it all,
to enjoy life EVEN THOUGH you are quite well informed. 

“Be joyful, though you have considered all the facts.”  – Wendell Berry  *  **

 

JESUS

in JOHN 16  –  31 Jesus answered them, “Do you now believe? 32 The hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each one to his home, and you will leave me alone. Yet I am not alone because the Father is with me. 33 I have said this to you so that in me you may have peace. In the world you face persecution, but take courage: I have conquered the world!”

PAUL

in PHILIPPIANS 4  –  Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

“Joyful” has various expressions and implications – peace, courage, lower anxiety, being sensible, personal choice …

C S LEWIS

The first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb, when it comes, find us doing sensible and human things – praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts – not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs.

DAD

Any old dead fish can float downstream.

HAROLD E DWYER

Be happy. Make people happy. Keep your mouth shut.

JANE GOODALL

What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.

REV SENATOR RAPHAEL WARNOCK

A vote is a kind of prayer about the kind of world you want to live in.

GANDHI

We must become the change we wish to see in the world.

ANNE FRANK

I don’t think of all the misery, but of the beauty that still remains.

These people seem to know the value of being joyful, eh?

See also:
Reducing Joy to Self-Indulgence.
How to Feel More Grateful. It’s Thanksgiving! – Seriously, How to Be Grateful. We’re Not Powerless.

__________

* The title quotation is from Wendell Berry’s poem, “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front,” in New Collected Poems, Counterpoint Berkeley, 2012.  p 174.

** For most of these quotations I don’t know a published source.  Harold Dwyer was quoted at his funeral.  Sen Warnock sent this quote in a Facebook post.

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