Choose Joy
I recently read a blog by Rev. Cameron Trimble. Her thoughts are shared here for our June Memoir/Discussion prompt:
“Our Black siblings have long held joy as a form of resistance. It’s what birthed jazz in the face of brutality. It’s what sang spirituals through the chains of slavery. It’s what laughed in kitchens and danced in church aisles and found life even in the margins.
Joy doesn’t wait until freedom comes. It creates the pathway to it.
We are not betraying our grief by laughing. We are strengthening our capacity to survive it, to feel deeply and remember what makes us human, to stay connected to beauty when the world feels bleak.
Let’s not treat joy as a luxury. Let’s treat it as a lifeline.
We’re in this together.”
For Discussion: “When was the last time you truly laughed? What did it awaken in you?”
And from Rev. Trimble:
A Prayer for Joy That Holds the World
Spirit of Laughter,
You who crack the sky open with thunder,
who fill lungs with breath and bellies with laughter—
meet us here.We carry grief in our bones.
We carry dread in our newsfeeds.
And still, we ask:
Let joy rise up in us.Not as denial.
Not as escape.
But as resistance.
As memory.
As a reminder that we are more than what breaks us.Help us to laugh—not because everything is okay,
but because we still believe it can be.Amen.
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