BE JOY AND BE KIND—LIKE THE DALI LAMA AND JESUS - Don Hanley’s blog #55

In my home in 2024, I watched a delightful documentary entitled MISSION: JOY. It featured a movie camera and mic following two of my favorite old men, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama, spending a week together talking about life. If you know who they are, I don’t need to tell you that they spent decades working for peace, justice, and the well-being of their fellow men and women in South Africa and Asia, respectively. And as they worked, they managed to keep a sense of joy. Real joy comes from love - not from what is happening with you on this day. AND I just watched a 'debate' between JOY and HOPE versus GLOOM and DOOM and feeling, deep in my bones,;  that JOY won. So I'm feeling even more joy.

While contemplating the film, I thought of the many pictures and scripture descriptions of Jesus and couldn’t remember ever seeing or reading about Jesus being joyful. So, the next time I sat with my Nazarene dream friends, I want to talk to Mary and whoever was with her. about Jesus and Joy.

I was there that evening—in Mary’s flower garden in Nazareth. John, Paul, Joshua, Ruth, and Julie were with her. I told them my missing mention of any pictures or stories about Jesus feeling and expressing joy by smiling or laughing. Immediately, Mary threw up her hands and nearly shouted, “Your writers and artists are missing a huge part of who my son was and is. They depict only a fraction of what he is. Wouldn’t you agree, John?”

John looked at me and said, “Don, this story might help you: One time, Jesus and four of us followers walked into a small village, and we saw a very emaciated man and his young son sitting by the side of the road. Jesus stopped and asked the fellow how we might help him. He was almost too weak to answer but whispered, ‘We are so very hungry, and so are my two other children and their mother. Our dwelling burned down, and we lost everything, and all of us have been injured, so…” His voice trailed off, and Jesus said to us. ‘Let us go around the village here and see if we can find food, shelter, and maybe a healing hand for this family.’ So, two of us went one way, and Jesus and the other, newer members of our group, went another to find food and help. We were surprised to find that in this village about the size of Nazareth, no one seemed to know of this poor family. Anyway, my partner and I found an elderly couple who had a shanty in the back of their property that the family could stay in, and they would give them some clothes that their children had left them with. They were quite thin and had no extra food, but their neighbors did. Jesus and his two found food, and more was promised for the future. We all helped the family get to the shanty, and one neighbor was a sort of ‘medicine man’ who left some ointment with them after applying some of it on their most serious burns.”

John continued with a smile, “And as we left, Jesus kidded us about being so glum. He said we must always do our very best to feel the joy we have in our hearts. even when we are worried and a bit sad.”

 Mary said, “Now, John, thank you for that story. I had never heard it, but it was typical of how my son was in the world. Even with the children here in Nazareth, he would check to see if they were hungry or hurt. He would laugh and smile nearly all the time. If you hear any of those so-called Christians of yours talking like Jesus was a gloomy Gus, tell them John’s story – and that will also let them know that to love Jesus is to love those in need. And for pity’s sake, do not sit around and say or sing that they love Jesus. Oh, and say all this with a smile on your face. Don, don't be so serious all the time yourself. Even though you are older than me in your life, I’m beginning to think of you as my stepson.” She laughed and added, “How’s that?”

My twenty-first-century fellow believers need an updated faithfulness and have some new two-thousand-year-old thoughts. And with that thought, I disappeared–so with joy . . . 

Smile and open your eyes and heart, glance at the menus, and joyfully sit at the banquet and sing as you get to work.

Mission: JOY #9

Recently, I watched MISSION: JOY, the title of a delightful documentary on Netflix. A narrator and cameraman followed Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama around for a week as they discussed life, love, death, faith, and hope.

They both have been heroes of mine for years, and I felt a great deal of joy after watching them walk, talk, smile, and engage each other in their I–Thou togetherness. Tutu was my age, 90 when he died two years ago, and the Dalai Lama is now 88. They have been working to bring peace, compassion, and hope all their lives. And they have been through hell and back – yet still are the epitome of JOY. I felt a deep joy as I watched this film. I believe joy is not something I can conjure up but a feeling I get when I do something that helps me experience positive and hopeful emotions.

When I was a child, I wondered why Jesus and other supposedly ‘holy people’ were always pictured looking so serious and grim. And my family role models were miles from any joyful world. Now, at 90, I look back to my first 11 years and think I believed I was always supposed to be a serious and even sad ‘good’ boy. I was led to believe that I had to be serious all the time. I think I even believed it might be sinful when I would run, laugh, sing, and act nutty. It seemed that in my family, my six older siblings laughed and sang off-key only when they drank beer. At first, they’d seem happier, but often, that turned to meanness. I didn’t like them or the mean way they talked and acted.

By the time I was a teenager, I had made it known that I was planning to be a priest. I assumed that meant I must always be serious – like Jesus and those ‘holy’ guys were. I was a gloomy guy who did not know joy.

The musical films of the l940s helped me to begin singing when I was around 11, and it saved my life and introduced me to feelings of joy. I began to believe that Jesus would like to be called the ‘joyful one’ – rather than the ‘holy one.’

In my novel, A New World of Hope, I describe a K–12 school that begins each school day with the entire school – including faculty, janitors, students, and everyone (including parents if they wished) gathering in the schoolyard and singing and dancing for twenty to thirty minutes. And in that school, every student is encouraged to learn a musical instrument and to write songs. Singing is a neglected art in our society, I believe. Oh, yes, we listen to many songs and make ‘pop singers’ millionaires, but too often, we are spectators rather than singers. And we wonder why an increasing number of our youth are depressed and anxious. They need to sing and dance and, I believe, they will feel joy. I’m glad I started singing fairly young and sang as I worked pulling weeds, sweeping the sidewalk, and walking places – we didn’t have a car to take me places, so I walked and sang. So, for a more hopeful world – sing and dance! And as a friend says: “Some say that God sees everything we do, so the least we can do is be entertaining.”

Nurture your heart, and don’t eat the menu.