Second Advent Post

 Joy: 

Joy comes from getting something personally meaningful accomplished.  Joy comes from completing a difficult task.  Joy comes from ending a difficult struggle and having security that what comes next will be much easier to handle.  As such, joy is a hard thing to retain.  We as a society don’t know what our next turn will bring.  We don’t know what will give us security or happiness, or if it will last very long.  But there are things, even if they only last briefly, that can provide levity.  A song with good memories, a movie we like, tweets from some famous person with either a sense of humor or good values, working on cleaning up a mess in the home, looking for good news like music releases or fanart of something you like, comedy on YouTube, these all can provide some joy.  These have, in parts, gotten me through the last four years of Political Garbage and right now, I’m relying on them for more personal issues, the issues of feeling irrelevant and unimportant, the feelings of being unable to change things for the better in my personal life and beyond.  We are all blessed more than we realize with things we never saw coming as we grew up, when I was five, I was happy just to have the “Tenders and Turntables” Thomas the Tank Engine VHS, now, I can carry Ringo Starr’s voice on my phone wherever I go, as well as so many other musicians I’ve seen on TV between now and then.  I never thought I’d have a sister-in-law I’d love like the one I have until my brother got more serious with her.  I never thought I’d have a video game where you could play as over 70 different characters and I’d learn as much as I could about all of them, but now it exists and I play it every week.  That should be enough to give us at least a little joy.

 

 

Love:

 

As someone obsessed with music, I have heard many a love song in my time.  But what is love when you get right down to it?  What is love in the context of Hope, Peace and Joy?  Love is when you care for someone else’s wellbeing.  Love is when you want to do anything to ensure someone you care for doesn’t cry.  Love is waking up in the middle of the night, hugging your spouse and singing to them.  Love is working hard to ensure a brighter future for those who don’t have what you have.  Love is putting banners for BLM and the LGBTQ+ community on the front of your Church.  Love is striving in your own small way to feel better about situations you can’t control.  Love is asking for help when you need it, admitting your frailties and celebrating your accomplishments with your friends and family.  Love is knowing what you and others need and giving it.  Love is giving people 70 times 7 chances, hugging those you can’t be near in your mind, believing in a powerful Light that will reward those who have helped you with your struggles and made your dark and painful times brighter and happier.  Love is putting down self-centered actions because you’re thinking of how someone else would feel.

Love is free

Free is Love

Love is you, you and me

Love is knowing we can be

Love is the purest way to experience God, because God is love, God is the act of compassion and mercy, God saves us from our foolhardy self-centered actions by showing us there are people who need what we have.  There are people hurting from a lack of Hope, Peace, Joy and Love in our lives, and it is our duty, our obligation and our responsibility as children of the Light, to give it to them.  God showed me that for the LGBTQ+ community and this year, showed me it for our ethnic minorities, as well, problems I wasn’t aware were still as alive and destructive as they were 60 years ago.  I wasn’t aware white supremacists were as welcome as when Wallace was Governor of Alabama (boo, boo, boo), if not even more dangerous now than then.  So we must fight on, we must continue with events like the Mariners Juneteenth broadcast this year, RWBY and Fire Emblem; Three Houses for the LGBTQ+ community and working for all who have been trampled on as we’ve assumed things stopped being bad, because this is a constant battle, and if we let up, love becomes subservient to hatred and Jesus becomes synonymous with racism and heteronormativity, which is incongruous with His teachings and life.