Advent Meditation: You took my Joy, I want it back!

Posted by: Susan Russell December 19, 2017 Archived Worship, Uncategorized

I love a good rant song, and Lucinda William’s Joy certainly qualifies. “I don’t want you anymore, you took my joy.”

I’ve been doing a lot of ranting this past year, and hardly a day passes when I don’t sing this song at someone: white supremacists in Virginia, Congress on the verge of passing an immoral tax bill, juries that won’t hold public servants accountable for killing, that guy who cut me off at Walnut and Fair Oaks, and, well, the President just about every day. You took my Joy, I want it back!

But of course my Joy is mine to give away. And when I get overwhelmed, and overcome with grief, and exhausted, I let it slip away. I give it away. I hand it over to those who do not have my interest, or yours, in mind or heart. So today I’m singing this to myself: You took my Joy, I’m getting it back!

And this is how I did that today. In December, the Laysan Albatross return to Kauai from months at sea, months when they never land, they fly and scoop squid and live in the air currents above the earth. They return to Kauai to reunite with their partners (they are monogamous) and create one egg for their nest. And raise their young together. That would be enough to up my joy quotient, but get this: 30% of the breeding pairs are female/female. So they lay two eggs, but they are not fertilized.

And so it happens that there is a breeding colony on Midway at the Pacific Missile Range Facility, where it is not safe for albatross to live or breed. So the naturalists take the fertilized eggs from those endangered nests and give them to the female pairs on Kauai, swap them for their unfertilized eggs, to hatch and raise.

Fergie and Malia just got their first egg. Joy! And all over Kauai pairs of albatross have filled their nests (some with help) and are preparing to bring new miracles into the world. And some have two mommies. So much Joy!

Nature is full of sadness and heartbreak, and that is the greatest challenge to me as a birder. But oh my, the joy that I receive in watching birds is so intense, so overflowing, so healing and renewing. I’m gonna get my Joy back, and I’m going to seek out beauty every time I’m aware that I’ve given it away. With a little help from my albatross friends.

May you find Joy this Advent, joy that no one can take from you or keep from you. It’s the only thing that’s going to save us.