, He provides a perfectly painted picture that shows the pain, joy, and triumph of resistance. It's clear that joy is the crown of the good life, as Miroslav Volf has said. Extrapolate how the actions I have outlined above may impact the way you write an appeal letter or organize a campaign. She resisted violence and oppression by asserting her existence and that of those around her. JOY is an act of resistance. Joy in that regard is a work that can become a state that can become a way of life. 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. 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. I appreciate your feedback. Come and join me and my colleagues on the AFP NYC IDEA Committee where we not only embrace inclusion, diversity, equity and access but we further these ideals within the Fundraising profession through planning, collaboration, implementation, and of courseJoy. We can do without pleasure,but not delight. I am printing this post in order to keep the many good points at hand. 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. Joy has an edge, it doesnt exist in vacuum. Willie, wonderful to have a conversation with you about joy. I think for me this topic brings a mingling of sadness and hope, so perhaps that carried through into the post. faith.yale.edu/media/joy-and-the-act-of-resistance-against-despair. But contemporary hits are just as suspect; the Soviet Union, for example, censored songs by artists as varied as AC/DC, Tina Turner, and Julio Iglesias. Marsha was a performer and activist who dedicated herself to supporting the most vulnerable LGBTQ New Yorkers with clothes, food and resources. Miroslav Volf: So it's almost like a Pentecost joy, each speaking in their own tongue, but speaking that language of joy together. Release Calendar Top 250 Movies Most Popular Movies Browse Movies by Genre Top Box Office Showtimes & Tickets Movie News India Movie Spotlight. 330 Ellis St., San Francisco, CA 94102 | info@glide.org. In the current national climate, it is more crucial than ever that we resist and repel the misogynist forces arrayed against us, and that we unconditionally stand with the women and LGBTQI people who are put at risk under the dangerous policies of the current administration. There is something absolutely beautiful about the joy created by communities, especially oppressed communities. In China under Mao, listening to the music of Beethoven was a crime. All in all, the church and multiple churches have been places of extreme joy, surprising joy, and to quote the title of a famous book by CS Lewis, places where I've been absolutely "surprised by joy," stunned by joy. This is slightly embarrassing, but when talking about womens empowerment the first people that come to mind for me are actually the Spice Girls. You talked about certain geographies of joy, the spaces which are configured in particular way. We are planning a team day at work, and youve given me lots to think about, and a framework for justifying some fun activities. Sojourner Truth, a suffragette, a fighter for womens rights during and after slavery time, said thefollowing: I will not allow the light of my life to be determined by the darkness around me. I find that quote to be so powerful for today, and for me. Willie Jennings: I think this is really important for us. It is well known in America that Black History month is celebrated for the entire month of February but, did you know it was created by a Fundraiser! Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account. We can be fluid, flexible when we have to be. 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. ", 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? Only a few animal species celebrate, and the ones that do have two things in common with humans: theyre highly intelligent and highly social. 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. But what does it mean when you're at some place where the world's trash comes to you and out of that trash, you have to do something. 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. Miroslav Volf: What is joy for you as a theologian, as a church men, as a black man? abulabbas Dec 27, 2021. The album was a huge critical & commercial success, peaking in the UK Albums Chart at No. Thanks so much for your thoughtful feedback. It is mind-boggling to them that Black people can still find peace. Maya Angelou is a very good inspiration, especially for African American women, saying that she could rise above nations. After all, struggles for justice are often also struggles for the acknowledgement of an oppressed groups full humanity. "Oh, the Spirit's coming." "The path of least resistance is what makes rivers run crooked." - Elbert Hubbard. Studies show that even when strangers move or vocalize together, they become more generous, more altruistic, and more willing to sacrifice their own needs for the good of the group. For his anger is but for a moment, and his favor is for a lifetime. Released on Partisan Records 31/08/18 1 X LP, includes digital download card Joy As An Act Of Resistance is a parade. Maybe they didn't intend it, but it did. Watching a pride parade, teeming with people dressed in all shades of ROY G BIV, the line between protest and party blurs, and its hard to sit on the sidelines in judgment. Every person and every community must grieve and resist in a way and at a pace that is right and healthy for them. And as if nobody there missed a beat, Ms. Myricks, and everybody there knew that it was time to dance in his honor. One of the goals of racism is to break your spirit by any means necessary. 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. We need it as much as we need anger because it is joy that will help keep us in. It is a parade of naivety, of a warm embrace, it is Young Thug's dress. 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. Rewind. Joy as an Act of Resistance (and who, pray tell, can resist a title like that?) "If you want to be the best, you can't take the path of least resistance. New Submission. It was released in August 2018 and recorded throughout 2017-18. Willie Jennings: Well, practically you have to have people who you've heard sing those songs in strange lands. 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. 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." We must walk a path of joy even against our doom. It's our joy to bring these shows to you. This is not what they imagined. We're grateful that you're listening. It requires you to choose it from a sea of other options. So somebody can walk into a space that have been marked by joy. Now Black History month is celebrated all over the globe. Joy Suffering God. I believe in the magic and authority of words.. Equipping Knox with an endless and unconditional amount of love is what carries him through each day. 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.. 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. What was she doing? "Find ecstasy in life: the mere sense of living is joy enough." Emily Dickinson 2. If you need to flag this entry as abusive, send us an email. My free Joyspotters Guide offers my best tips for finding joy everywhere you go! I grew up in such a situationlearning how to have a good time with nothing because we had nothing. $j("#connectPrompt").show(); Part of HuffPost Black Voices. That's why the narrator is able to say of this third Ofglen, "of course she is" Ofglen. Willie Jennings: Despair in all of the ways that despair wants to drive us toward death, and wants to make death the final word. Some of the containers holding the archives were dug up from . There's also the other ways in which space exists. "In contexts where your energies have to be focused on survival, it doesnt leave a lot of energy for overt forms of complaintyoure spending a lot of energy just trying to hold it together. Joy is an Act of Resistance Arts Corps Breaks Down Barriers in Arts Education By Carolyn Coons Arts Corps teaching artists work with students during the 2018 Arts Liberation and Leadership Institute (ALLI). I love you. Christopher McCandless It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge. Willie Jennings: Public rituals bound to real space. We can do without pleasure, but not delight. 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 . Events may create physical pain, but they do not in themselves create suffering. We are a people who have somehow been able to sing , live, and shout Hallelujah anyhow. 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.. Now, obviously we're talking beyond a kind of cultural tourism or kind of theological tourism. From the likes of Ari Up and Poly Styrene, who didnt sing about obtaining male affection or rely on stereotypical concepts of female self-worth, to outrageously hyper-sexualized women like Wendy O. Williams and Marian Anderson, who recaptured ownership of their bodies, these women were bold, outspoken, and as the kids say nowadays, woke. 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. How can a truly free state exist if the individual citizen is enslaved to the forceful will of individual or organized aggressors? We know the ritual all too well. Now I do want to take seriously the way in which a community finds joy and creates joy and creates patterns of pleasure that are imagined to only exist in integrity when the outside others are kept out. Last but not least, I offer you the opportunity to be inspired! Where fascism aims to instill fear, joy is the perfect resistance. Lee's grandaughter, Dione Sims, who is also a civil rights advocate, has been helping her in the . Stories are told, jokes are told, people walk in, comments are made, and without you being spoken to directly, you've been spoken to. Joy. a piece on the power of the garden at Rikers Island. Absolutely that. We are a people that has born witness to and embodied the miraculous ability to dance on the head of the enemy of our souls and press on to create a future that we do not yet see, and to do it with defiant joy. C.S. 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. Contributors control their own work and posted freely to our site. While we can justifiably be concerned about rainbow-washing, its a measure of success that brands and companies see LBGTQ pride as something theyre eager (even desperate) to be associated with. Its a curious feature of autocratic regimes that forms of joy are often banned. 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. What are spaces in which you yourself find joy? Somehow, by some great miracle, we followed his mothers lead, and it just happened. Elephants celebrate when the herd is reunited after a separation, stamping around, peeing, and trumpeting with their trunks. So for today, Sojourner Truth is my inspiration. PTKF2158-5. And I think at another level, the work of joy becomes serious work, which I think in our contextand by our context, I mean in the Westthe work of joy in many ways is not fully the people's work. Theres a deeper effect here too. (646) 846-3896 | admin@nycafp.org. Things arent perfect, but these bold women are responsible for a lot of change in thought around girls and women what they are capable of, their value, their position, etc. 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. Lorde uses the word erotic, meaning a form of deep, sensual (not necessarily sexual) pleasure, but I think you could easily use the word joy if it makes more sense to you: Recognizing the power of the erotic within our lives can give us the energy to pursue genuine change within our world, rather than merely settling for a shift of characters in the same weary drama., Ive talked a lot about the joy of communal celebration, but we can also find it in nature. Like Romeo, Juliet sees love as a kind of freedom, "boundless" and "infinite.". Essentially, hope is the belief that tomorrow can be better than today. Continue to get inspired by watching the movie Hidden Figures which features brilliant women like Dorothy Vaughn who used mathematical formulas to launch John Glenn into space. The Joyspotters Guide is a free resource that shares my favorite tips for finding more joy, everywhere you go! We danced like Darius was right there with us. Photo by Maria Baranova. But while there are good reasons to fear complacency, joy is fundamentally different than turning a blind eye. Sensory joy is a form of care that contrasts with traumatic circumstances and helps cultivate the resilience needed to counter oppression. Above all, the new album posits "joy as an act of defiance," Bono said. And there are so many silences to be broken.". So it is pushing back. Evan Rosa: For the Life of the World is a production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School. Miroslav Volf: Yeah. 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. Resistance creates suffering. The more dehumanizing the circumstances, the more we need these markers of our humanity. At EL Education's 2022 National Conference: A World of Good, Sydney joined school counselor Dominique Sawyer and fellow SAC members Stephanie Kacou and Marissa Barnwell for a panel . It's the parade . At one level, it is tied to real spaces and places. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. AFP New York City Chapter Joy as an Act of Resistance is the second studio album by British rock band Idles, released on 31 August 2018 by Partisan Records. Many of us have had the experience of being annoyed at a coworker, but then going to the company picnic, having a beer and a laugh together, and forgetting our annoyance. They didn't have dreams of speaking other's language. The ones that your heart recognizes in the light & in the dark. Sydney, a founding member of EL Education's Student Advisory Council, makes the impossible seem possible daily by using Black joy as an act of Black Resistance. 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