Ever since I read Prayer and the Pursuit of Happiness, I have read the work of Richard Harries. Indeed the stained glass window on the front cover became a tapestry project years ago, and it now hangs in my study at the College. What that book did (for me at any rate), was recover a positive view of human happiness as a life goal.
Sure, it's true enough if you set out looking for happiness you'll be disappointed - sometimes. But it does seem odd that those who are followers of one who was accused of too many parties, too much wine, overindulgence in food (glutton he was accused of, though allow some exaggeration for the zealously pious) keeping the wrong company, saying the wrong thing, doing good and helping people on the wrong days, - yes it does seem odd that Christians often seem ambivalent about happiness. Oh we're OK with joy, you know that deep, subterranean sense of emotional well-being "in the Lord", or that nearer the surface stuff that gets sung out in many a praise song many Sunday.
But happiness - uncomplicated, desirable, positive, laughter laced, pleasurable enjoyment of things, surface though not superficial, transient but transformative, the feeling in our bodies and minds that the most important word to say to life is yes! But isn't the pursuit of happiness to chase after chimera, to put personal pleasure first, to rely on emotion, mood and feelings rather than convictions, beliefs and spirituality.
What is a human being's chief end? To glorify God and enjoy God forever. What would be gratitude to the Creator - to enjoy created things as the gifts they are, surely? Suppose a friend gives you a gift of your favourite food, or a ticket for the gig you never thought you'd get to? Better not tell them you binned the food as an act of self-denial and love for God - or that you shredded the tickets as a way of strengthening your spiritual muscles! :)
I know. Caricature. But Harries was on to something. The way we are suspicious of sheer pleasure in things; that dominant strand in Christian spirituality that wants us to eliminate personal desires and suppress that part of us from which the words "I want" come. And ambition, love, desire, want, pleasure, leisure, reveling, laughter, - far from diminishing our spirituality, are significant parts of a full humanity without which spirituality impairs rather than enhances, and distorts rather than fulfills.
Thomas Traherne, that Creation-intoxicated mystic, is one of the few Christian writers who writes of happiness and enjoyment with unabashed enthusiasm. Actually, reading him out loud he sounds OTT - but maybe one of the reasons we are on the brink of ecological catastrophe is we no longer look on nature as the creation, and on material things as gift, and on the world as a living jewel entrusted to our care, and we are OTT about all the wrong things.
You never enjoy the world aright, till the Sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens, and crowned with the stars: . . . Till your spirit filleth the whole world, and the stars are your jewels; . . . till you love men so as to desire their happiness, with a thirst equal to the zeal of your own.
Prayer and the Pursuit of Happiness is one of those books that simply and directly questions our worldview. And asks whether this side of the resurrection, assuming the love of a faithful Creator, in a world suffused and enlivened by the Holy Spirit, there might just be reason to be happy, and for our happiness to be a grateful yes to God's gifts.
And sure, there is another kind of world - cruel, unjust, violent and violated, barren of freedom and marred and scarred by greed, waste and misery. But in such a world we are called to live for Jesus Christ, in the power of the Spirit, embodying the reconciling love of God. And surely part of that witness, is also the celebration of that which is good, wholesome, healing, restoring, just, funny, enjoyable - because human happiness, and human desires and human wanting are not wrong.
Inordinate desire, yes; self-interested wanting that robs others, yes; happiness purchased on others' misery, yes; each of these is nearer the greed that looks on the apple and hears that plausible persuasive question, "Did God say no?" But any reading of the Psalms, any reflection on how Jesus lived, and any honest facing up to what goes on in our own hearts, makes it clear that happiness is a good thing! And good things should be pursued, and shared. And maybe that is the best constraint and control of our wanting and our desiring - the sense of other people, of shared humanity and therefore of shared happiness in this great comi-tragic production we call our lives. Read the words of Traherne again - "to love people so as to desire their happiness, with a thirst equal to the zeal of your own". Or as Jesus said, Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled. Satisfied. Fulfilled, and yes, happy.
Comments