Eugene H. Peterson We are two abysses - a well staring at the sky. 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! This is the joy of the Lord that is our strength. They cannot take it." Lauren Oliver, Delirium tags: courage , love , resistance , strength 1065 likes Like Within the imperialist white supremacist capitalist cis-heteropatriarchy, we generate joy by defying dominator culture. Movies. And it creates a very different way of thinking about joy. Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning. We need it as much as we need anger because it is joy that will help keep us in. But for those two minutes we turned that cemetery from a place of death and mourning into a place of life and honor. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words., Where there is power, there is resistance., It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end., People get used to anything. When Im in the coffee house [GLIDEs dining room reserved for families, the elderly and the physically disabled] and people are sitting there still hungry, I dont rush them out or ask them to leave. Every morning, you wake up, and your mind tells you it's too early, and your body tells you you're a little too sore, but you've got to look deep within yourself and know what you want and what you're striving for." On the other hand, the novel shows that even in her fearful passivity, Offred does manage to resist her oppressors in the small ways that are available to her. (44.15) All of the Handmaids at this posting (Glen's) are called Ofglen (of Glen). By Crystal Fields-Sam Chair IDEA Committee . This month, people from across GLIDEs community are responding to the following question:When you think of the role of women in the advancement of social justice and resistance to oppression, who comes to mind as an inspiration?. This post, however, has left me feeling sad rather than joyful and hopeful. Above all, the new album posits "joy as an act of defiance," Bono said. [CDATA[ IDLES War T-Shirt. It is mind-boggling to them that Black people can still find peace. Last but not least, I offer you the opportunity to be inspired! Theres a deeper effect here too. You have to have conditions set up where those people who have learned how to ride the winds of chaos can say to you, "Come on, let me show you how to do that." John Keats Your success and happiness lies in you. Joy as an Act of Resistance., an Album by Idles. She also goes into prisons to empower and open safe spaces for queer folks. Thank you, Gail, and thank you for sharing! Willie, wonderful to have a conversation with you about joy. Black joy is also important for representation. The only problem in your life is your mind's resistance to life as it unfolds. 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 the most celebratory of all animals are our closest relatives, the chimpanzees. Miroslav Volf: So if I hear you correctly, there's something right and good about a kind of particularity of joy for an individual, particularity of joy of a family, particularity of joy of a cultural group. And like an old cassette tape, the world presses stop, rewind, and play. 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. Joy - An Act of Resistance (Podcast Episode 2019) Quotes on IMDb: Memorable quotes and exchanges from movies, TV series and more. Local authorities often forbade or disrupted native rites, or at minimum made relinquishing them a condition of conversion. You'll also receive periodic updates on new things from The Aesthetics of Joy. Remember. Essentially, hope is the belief that tomorrow can be better than today. How would you put it? 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. So it is pushing back. I look at joy as an act of resistance against despair and its forces, all the forces of despair. And there's something very powerful about a womb of joy that nurtures and helps constitute identity. So for today, Sojourner Truth is my inspiration. Maya Angelou and Rosa Parks. , The likelihood that your acts of resistance cannot stop the injustice does not exempt you from acting in what you sincerely and reflectively hold to be the best interests of your community., I believe in the resistance as I believe there can be no light without shadow; or rather, no shadow unless there is also light., After all, if you do not resist the apparently inevitable, you will never know how inevitable the inevitable was., We must learn that passively to accept an unjust system is to cooperate with that system, and thereby to become a participant in its evil., Protest is when I say I don't like this. Resistance is when I put an end to what I don't like. Tricia Hersey, Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto. Miroslav Volf: Things are going to be better. After all, struggles for justice are often also struggles for the acknowledgement of an oppressed groups full humanity. There is that space. 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. Willie Jennings: To press even further, it could be that one thing under utilized by Christian intellectuals is precisely this latter reality that Jesus himself points us toward, a family that becomes reconfigure. 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. Music, dance, art, eroticism: all of these fuel an emotional response that creates momentum, one that can be hard to control. In China under Mao, listening to the music of Beethoven was a crime. How lucky to have met him. I loved your book, and this post really lifted my spirits. Bitch Media Editor-in-Chief Evette Dionne put it best in a recent Instagram post: "Joy is a revolutionary force. Thank you so much for the kind words, Helen! But here I'm wondering: if there is not a Christological intervention that the life of Jesus draws us toward, that brings an invitationthat the very form of joy and pleasure and contentment and comfort that you imagine in the enclosed space can actually be something far richer, far more beautiful, far more pleasurable in this new space, in which your joy is constituted with some of the very people who you imagine are a part of your despair, not a part of your joyor those who you imagine their joy that is absolutely in what they find enjoyable is absolutely foreign to what I would. As I stood amid a sea of mostly young black faces at New Revelation Baptist, I found myself seeking my own new revelation by asking hard questions about what has become a dangerously mundane ritual around young black bodies. Between the two stands Resistance.. To laugh in the face of fear is possibly the bravest act, which is why Saffiyah Khan became an instant hero in the United Kingdom when she smiled at fascist thugs from the far-right, racist movement English Defence League who began harassing Muslim women in her hometown. 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 . 7. There is a joy that draws peoples together rather than a joy that's built within segregated spaces. Its power seems inescapable. This episode featured theologians, Willie Jennings and Miroslav Volf. What does a life of healing, flourishing, and joy even look like for communities that are constantly riddled with deeply traumatic pain? PTKF2158-5. Visit faith.yale.edu/give. And here I'm not thinking primarily about African-American or African diaspora communities, but I'm thinking about the way in which multiple communities, their joy is inside of a hard segregation. I love your posts and the joy they inspire in me. "Yes. And this is the kind of joy that no evil power can extinguish. People who refuse to stop believing. Yet, as the onslaught of trauma and terror continues to reek havoc on our communities both through the systematic racism of state violence and through the deeply internalized racism of gang violence, families and communities like the Smith and Myricks families in Northwest Pasadena point each of us of the power of joy. 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. Lee's grandaughter, Dione Sims, who is also a civil rights advocate, has been helping her in the . Spiritual resistance refers to attempts by individuals to maintain their humanity, personal integrity, dignity, and sense of civilization in the face of Nazi attempts to dehumanize and degrade them. He had a way of speaking that made you feel like magic. Check out our joy as an act of resistance selection for the very best in unique or custom, handmade pieces from our t-shirts shops. Willie Jennings: They had dreams of power. by FANTANAMOBAY. UK & US. We can do without pleasure,but not delight. //]]>. And the clear example I'm drawing on is African diaspora communities in which there's a reality of joy built inside the forced segregation. 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. Clad in black plastic bags that blend into the cityscape, the consequences of our disposable culture become almost invisible. And there's something very powerful about that because as one artist says, "It's how, especially oppressed in poor people, can make something really beautiful out of what has been thrown away." Other soldiers wrote home requesting flower seeds to plant. Societal change always involves a lot of pain as those with privilege and power often refuse to listen or take responsibility for the suffering theyve caused. I have no earthly idea how it happened. 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. But fundamentally, that is built uponand I never want to draw too sharp a distinction between other kinds of spaces and that geographic spacewe really should start to attend to where do we find joy, where do we find joy. Joy in that regard is a work, that can become a state, that can become a way of life." No doubt you won't find many people who regularly think about their lives in this very moment and associate joy. Hope is an elusive yet vital ingredient for activism. Willie Jennings: Yeah, this is where I wonder out loud if the life of Jesus, a kind of Christological intervention, is what's necessary for us to re-conceive joy that opens us out rather than encloses. The separation of the races geographically speaking, and not simply socially speaking. It was how you were talked to how people thought of you what you could do/couldnt do even what you were perceived as being capable of accomplishing. Thank you! Rosa and Maya inspire me in my work. It's a robust act of resistance against despair. 4. JOY is an act of resistance. Celebratory joy creates unity on an emotional and a physical level, and a unified populace is harder to dominate. People who refuse to come to earth. Posted on May 17, 2022 May 24, 2022 by Dilnwaaz Brey "Claiming joy is an act of freedom and power. 8. But, the reality of it is that I have been in spaces of joy in hospital rooms, gathered with a family and a loved one who's passing on, but there are rituals of remembrance going on, grief processes being begun, and in the midst of that, incredible joyjoy connected to sorrow. I see the outcome of their efforts now that Im older. Albert Einstein A thing of beauty is a joy forever: its loveliness increases; it will never pass into nothingness. 3. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Willie Jennings: I like singing a song in a strange land. 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. Part of HuffPost Black Voices. - Sam Storms. (More on this form of joyful activism here.). Often there is no reason to make such choices outside the context of the primary choice that calls for them.". One example of this phenomenon is prison gardens. It is one the things that makes us truly human. Mr. Lincoln also signed the Homestead Act that offered 100 acres of land for families who had the courage to settle the frontier and farm the . She lives in my native and beloved city of Bogot, Colombia, where she divides her time between teaching and working for an amazing nonprofit, PARCES. And because of that, we probably have to press more deeply when we start to talk about the integrity of a Christian vision of joy until we understand that dynamic. For activists, who live with chronic stress, the risk of burnout is physiological. One to watch out for. Contributors control their own work and posted freely to our site. Cal State Fullerton African American studies professor Mei-Ling Malone explains: "Black joy is an act of resistance. 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. 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. 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. We cry out for justice. Choir singers heart rates synchronize; musicians playing the same riff have brain waves that line up. Joy in that regard is a work that can become a state that can become a way of life. This joy cannot and will not be robbed from Autistic kids of color. Associate Professor of Systematic Theology and Africana Studies, Yale Divinity School, Founder & Director, Yale Center for Faith & Culture, Defining joyan act of resistance against despair, "Resisting all the ways in which life can be strangled and presented to us as not worth living", Making productive use of pain, suffering, and the absurdtaking them serious. They didn't have dreams of speaking other's language. Dancing was similarly reviled, and all types of celebration found themselves in the crosshairs of European colonists setting out to spread Christianity and civilization around the world. 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. I am not suggesting here that joy will always be present in times of mourning. Thanks for listening. If we relinquish our joy, we not only lose a profound source of unity, strength, and resilience, we also lose the point of it all. Women like Emma Watson, Malala and Beyonc (who thankfully introduced so many people to the amazing Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie) are empowering young women through their speeches, actions and music and providing a gateway to larger feminist and social justice movements. If you're in a position to support our show financially, please consider partnering with us. Willie Jennings: Yeah. There can be complaint, but you're spending a lot of energy just trying to hold it together. In his poem, A Brief for the Defense, he writes: If we deny our happiness, resist satisfaction,we lessen the importance of their deprivation.We must risk delight. But whats most remarkable is what happens after these festivities. Search within the 97 Quotes About Joy. To be Black and joyful despite and against all the odds is an act of resistance. Chimps are extremely hierarchical, so whats notable about these celebrations is that they disrupt the typical hierarchy, prompting a more egalitarian mode of behavior. It was released in August 2018 and recorded throughout 2017-18. As you can probably tell, now I don't spend much time in barbershops anymore, but back in the day when I used to spend time in barbershopsbarbershops and beauty shops are really interesting, especially in black communities, because they can be in ways that are, as I like to say, profound realities of indirection and they can be spaces of incredible joy. Dr. Engram's "Black Joy as an Act of Resistance" takes the listener on a journey through the life of Black millennials. AFP NYC Board Member. Let us know what you're interested in. It goes against everything that racism was designed to do. Willie Jennings: As I like to say, I'm a child of the church. So it's not the badness of that family's vision of joy against the goodness of something else, but it is the opening up of that family's vision of joy. Play. "But eventually you will find you return to your original behavior and attitudes. I think for me this topic brings a mingling of sadness and hope, so perhaps that carried through into the post. The collective representation of Black people in the industry is abysmal, as evidenced by multicultural children's publisher Lee & Low's baseline survey. 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. This is not what they imagined. My free Joyspotters Guide offers my best tips for finding joy everywhere you go! We've been taught that silence would . Listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkF_G-RF66MUK punk outfit IDLES returns with an album that improves on the brutal and politically charged style the b. If you need to flag this entry as abusive, send us an email. They could see that people were attracted to the notion that joy is resistance, and the joy itself is powerful. But if you can give, if you're truly passionate about supporting podcasting that's all about pursuing really living lives that are worthy of our humanity, then consider a gift to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture. Miroslav Volf: So if you have a kind of cultural logic that sets patterns for expressions of joy, but it ends up being segregated joy, how do you break open out of the enclosure? There's a very powerful analogy to, if you will, the work of the spirit at that moment, that a space is created not by you, but in a strange sort of way without you knowing it, it's for you. "We must risk delight. Us in forbade or disrupted native rites, or at minimum made relinquishing them condition! Of Resistance., an album by Idles never pass into nothingness riff have brain waves that line up 's.! The cityscape, the world presses stop, rewind, and not simply socially speaking heart rates ;. Bitch Media Editor-in-Chief Evette Dionne put it best in a strange land requesting flower seeds plant! 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