The pursuit of happiness [read: grief]

 

We want to be happy.  All the time.  Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is as about as American as you can get.  It's deeper than American, it's human.  Humans seek happiness.

I find great happiness in experiencing beauty--a waterfall, a perfect front porch, deep red cherries on the cherry tree in our yard, the ancient look in a newborn's eye--beauty draws me to a deeper soul dimension.  It roots me in what is good, and true, and whole. Happiness for me is about living well with grace, loving the people in my path with my whole heart, seeking justice with open eyes and breaking heart, and finding the Holy Spirit in unexpected and expected places.  I am deeply happy when I am connected to people, living from my heart, and being part of the movement of God in small ways.

This kind of happiness is born not from the pursuit of happiness, but out of the pursuit of grief.

 Real happiness is paradoxically not in the "pursuit of happiness".  It is in the pursuit of grief.  A very unAmerican thing, but full of the Spirit.

In the spiritual life, we learn quickly that the path to happiness is not, always or even often, easy. Nor is the path to happiness forged from carefree living.  Real happiness is forged from grief.

The greatest gifts the Spirit gives us is the gift of repentance. To repent--to turn away--to change directions--is not something that we do in and of ourselves, it is a gift of God.  The apostle Peter speaks strong words in front of the high priests in the temple. The high priests were the people in charge of the whole repentance situation.  And here, in front of them, Peter announces that Jesus who they killed by hanging on a tree, God gives Israel (and all of us) forgiveness of sin (Acts 5:31). God gives us the gift of repentance.  It is the best gift God can give.  The gift of repentance through Jesus Christ is such a powerful, uncontrollable gift that it continues to be revolutionary.  Religious power structures have tried to control it, charge for it, and own it--but it is a gift, freely given, never to be governed by human powers.

The grief of recognizing that we have not embraced the Goodness in us, but instead turned from it and chosen Self is the beginning of Real Happiness.

In 2 Cor. 7:10, Paul tells us that "godly grief produces repentance that leads to salvation and brings no regret...". And in Romans 2:4 we learn that it is God's kindness that leads us to repentance.

When the pursuit of grief--or the recognition of finiteness of life, the reality of our choosing Self over Others, the knowledge of loss as part of life, and the understanding that we cannot save our selves--becomes the pathway that we walk, it leads us to happiness.

Repentance leads us to happiness.  It orients our heart with the center on God, not on our Self.  And this all-defining change, changes everything about how we see the world.

Repentance is the beginning of and the daily way to live in the world.  When we live in this place of grief, we find happiness.  

Or happiness finds us.  We no longer need certain things to make us happy, happiness finds us, surrounding us, naming us, creating us.  Not because we pursued it, but because we pursued the grief that we have come to the end of ourselves and need God.