The Speed of Love
What is the most fun party you’ve ever attended? Do you remember—can you with your senses?—what made it so fun? Would you even say, perhaps, that you experienced joy?
I imagined this question this morning as I sat to write, and a wash of memories, moments when it was evident that laughter had broken through whatever else might be present to bring connection to a group, making friends where there might be division, softening time and wrapping it in joy, came over me.
If but for a moment.
We know life in moments, and these moments can become anchors for our nervous system and heart to remember connection. Good recall is important for imagining the future. How do I want to live? Ah yes, I’ve experienced this answer. What is it that brought me there? What were the qualities that created in me a knowing that, yes, this is the way it feels to be restored and whole?
I remembered a few big celebrations, when there was abundant laughter, food, connection that lasted late into the night. These days, though, it’s the quieter moments that could easily be missed that I’m celebrating.
Like this particular night in my home during a recent visit with my father in law from Rhode Island.
It just so happened that this was December 5th, which would be my father’s 76th birthday. He died in 1991, but my children and I still celebrate the day of his birth by bringing a little Christmas tree to his grave, eating at an old favorite diner of his, visiting my mom and stepfather, and then feasting on an Italian meal while we begin decorating for the Christmas season. These were some of my father’s favorite things—Christmas, dining on good food, gathering around a table. Moving at the pace of love.
This day of this year was busy, a full agenda had me running before the sun had even risen. This picture moment came after a lot of rushing, everyone in our home distracted; after wondering if anyone would get off their phones, after listening to various divided opinions about the state of the nation, after hoping we might be restored to peace and perhaps even joy.
Yet, in my memory, this night was a great party, full of witness and connection and, yes, joy.
First my teens, then my father in law, sat down to play the game of Life. I can’t remember the last time I saw my kids take out a board game together, but this night they did. Then my father in law joined in, ever a game lover, and the hilarity began.
In the background of this picture is the sound of friendly banter and laughter, the smell of Chicken Picatta and Cacio e Pepe (a Pecorino cheese and pepper pasta dish), the soulful singing of Frank Sinatra. All the busy broke and I stood for a moment just to watch—yes, this is the speed of love. This is how we participate in the continuing recreation of the world. This is the best kind of party I can imagine these days, one where generations of time and divided opinions and the rush of an overpacked agenda fall away. Times when we remember that we all sorrow, and we make space inside the little room of ourselves to recognize when joy has arrived. I think my father would approve of this “birthday” celebration day.
Ross Gay gives me this today in his newest book Inciting Joy:
“My hunch is that joy is an ember for or precursor to wild and unpredictable and transgressive and unboundaried solidarity. And that that solidarity might incite further joy. Which might further solidarity. And on and on. My hunch is that joy, emerging from our common sorrow—which does not necessarily mean we have the same sorrows, but that we, in common, sorrow—might draw us together. It might depolarize us and de-atomize us enough that we can consider what, in common, we love. And though attending to what we hate in common is too often all the rage (and it happens also to be very big business), noticing what we love in common, and studying that, might help us survive. It’s why I think of joy, which gets us to love, as beign a practice of survival.”
Which is why today, on the third Sunday of the season of Advent, as I lit a pink candle for joy, I said this prayer:
May we be free from compressed schedules and recognize our days as human-sized. May our good intentions and longings be blessed, and may we be freed from them. May we be free from performative and prescriptive joy, the pressure to have it all figured out and fixed. And may we have eyes to see the gentle delights that grow naturally, as we learn to live at the speed of love’s arriving.
And finally, a yoga practice, should you like to move gently a bit along with me in video time. Yoga with Christa
Be well friends. As I prepare to send this, later in the day than I like, big white flakes of snow are falling outside the window over the pine tree that lives beside my church. It is beautiful, joyfully quiet, to pause here and imagine you where you are, reading this in your time. If today is hard, may you read this knowing that my heart is imagining you now, and praying there is a wash of joy as you consider that.