[Sundaycommunity] Fwd: Joan Chittister speech

[Catherine Walther]

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Gertrud
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 2021 at 10:44
Subject: Joan Chittister speech
To: <taprootcan at googlegroups.com>


Dear Friends,

This was sent to me by a friend.  I think you'll like it.
Catherine

This is a weekly message coming from Joan Chittister’s community.

I copied it up to the point where you’ll find a *Click here* to get to her
website and then another click here to listen to *a half-hour speech by
Chittister.*
It is the best I have heard from anyone in a very long time.




As we enter the New Year, Sister Joan shares her thoughts on happiness.
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<https://mailchi.mp/benetvision/do-no-harm-to-the-earth-747790?e=608064d9cd>
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<http://us6.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=0bcd62516ffe48a23a1231c56&id=5877b4c995&e=608064d9cd>

<https://joanchittister.us6.list-manage.com/track/click?u=0bcd62516ffe48a23a1231c56&id=f2b10a6ad7&e=608064d9cd>

Happiness is a work in process
“Once upon a time,” the tale tells, “an angel appeared to a seeker hard at
work in the field of life and said, ‘I have been instructed by the gods to
inform you that you will have 10,000 more lives.' ”

The wanderer who had been pursuing the dream of eternal life for years,
slumped to the ground in despair. “Oh, no,” the seeker cried. “Ten thousand
more years; ten thousand more years!” and the seeker wailed and rolled in
the dust.

Then the angel moved on to another seeker bent over in the heat of the day
and repeated the same message. “I have been told to tell you,” the angel
said, “that you will have 10,000 more lives.”

“Really?” the seeker exclaimed. “Ten thousand more lives?” Then the seeker
straightened up, arms flung toward heaven, head up, face beaming and began
to dance and prance and shout with joy. “Only 10,000 more lives!” the
seeker cried ecstatically. “Only 10,000 more lives.”

There is, I’ve come to understand as the years go by, a bit of both these
seekers in all of us. Certainly in me.

One part of me, like the Sufi promised 10,000 more lives, goes in and out
of phases at the very thought of it, moaning with the Hebrew psalmist as I
go, “O woe is me that my journey is prolonged.” With the poet, I “all alone
beweep my outcaste state” when life takes one of its erratic swings and
turns on me, deprives me, I think, rejects me, or, most of all, denies me
what I want. I mourn the lack of something, someone, some time, somewhere,
that I’m certain will certainly make me happy again.

On the other hand, I have loved life. Like the second seeker, I have loved
every moment of it, however deep the difficulty of living in a family that
was never really a family. I lusted after every breath of it. I always
thought of it as getting better, getting fuller even while I lived a life
that by nature limited the things others used to mark their security or
their success or their lifetime records of happiness. I got older and loved
it even more. There wasn’t much left of it in my drawers and cupboards but
I found a great deal of what it meant to me inside. Whatever the struggles
of it—the deaths, the life changes, the polio, the wrenching attempts to
make better the parts of it crushed under the weight of inertia—I would
take more of it if I could. And I am convinced that I am not alone.

As I look back on a life that has, it seems, had its share of what the
world could call unhappiness: early deaths that changed the course of my
life but which I could not claim destroyed it; debilitating illnesses that
never really managed to debilitate me; sharp shifts in the hopes and plans
of a lifetime that leave me a bit wistful yet but not at all defeated; and
the continuing struggles to be fully human in a man’s world and fully [image:
Happiness by Joan Chittister]
<https://joanchittister.us6.list-manage.com/track/click?u=0bcd62516ffe48a23a1231c56&id=a5aa99097f&e=608064d9cd>adult
in a clericalized church that is more comfortable with martinets and
minions that it is with thinking women. But real as those things are, they
are the stuff of challenge, not of unhappiness. Unless, of course, I fail
to make the distinction between what it is to be challenged by life and
what it is to be fulfilled by it.

 Happiness, I have learned, is a work in process.

                     —from *Happiness*
<https://joanchittister.us6.list-manage.com/track/click?u=0bcd62516ffe48a23a1231c56&id=67e64332ed&e=608064d9cd>
by
Joan Chittister (Eerdmans)

------------------------------
What's New: January 4, 2021

*[image: The Time is Now by Joan Chittister]
<https://joanchittister.us6.list-manage.com/track/click?u=0bcd62516ffe48a23a1231c56&id=1a2aab709b&e=608064d9cd>NEW
TALK ON WEBSITE:*Joan Chittister’s talk on prophetic spirituality presented
online to over 600 women and men serving with the Ignatian Volunteer Corp
is now available on her website. Click here
<https://joanchittister.us6.list-manage.com/track/click?u=0bcd62516ffe48a23a1231c56&id=d45cf5a380&e=608064d9cd>
.

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*May you walk in joy as love calls us on.*
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