Today we celebrate the lighting of the fourth Advent candle, the candle for Joy.
When Nathaniel asked me to participate in this Advent series he asked, “Which week would you like to do? and I immediately replied “I Choose Joy”.’
My joy journey really started here at United Church of Christ at Valley Forge so I thought it was only fitting that I start by telling that story. In early 2014 I had my performance review with my boss at GSK and it didn’t go well. When I finished the video call I thought “that was the most joyless encounter of my professional career.” And then I reflected that if I was waiting for the joy in my life to come from my boss it was one, sad and two I could wait a long time!
That Tuesday evening I called Ellen Matthews who was planning the first church Talent show on the Friday evening and asked if there was space on the playbill. I said “I want to do 8 minutes of stand-up comedy’ and then I asked “will there be any tomatoes or soft foods that might be thrown?” Ellen assured me “It’s all finger food and it will bounce off you!”. On Friday night I did my first ever stand-up set and the mantra in my head was “Choose Joy”. The joy in my life is of my own creating and my own making.
In 2018 I was at a training course, and we were invited to complete a Values exercise and it was something I’d never done before but it was something that I welcomed. And there was about 30 different values listed and the exercise pushed us to take that list and finalize down to two. And when I did that I landed on Joy and Connection. And those values have stood the test of time in these past 4 years including through the pandemic.
In 2020 I decided that I would take a sabbatical from work – my son’s camps had been cancelled and my Mother had just passed away and I was unable to go to Scotland for the funeral. In the spaciousness of the time I had with the family my definition of joy evolved. I found it in the simple things like resting and reading, biking and walking and I centered my sabbatical around the Richard Rohr prayer “Be still and know that I am God.” (Based on Psalm 46)
Six weeks later after my sabbatical it was announced that my job, amongst many others, was going to be eliminated at GSK. A friend of mine had said ‘Angela, here’s another job, you’d be great at it’ and a few days later I went back to her and said ‘thank you for thinking of me, I read every word but needle on my joy-ometer fell off.” I was being a little flippant, but it was true, the job description did not fill me with any joy and I just thought I cannot do that job. I don’t want to do that job. I decided that I was going to make decisions about what was next in my professional life based on my joy-ometer.
As I started to think more about retiring from the company and starting my own company my needle on the joy-ometer started going up and off the charts. So that’s what I did. I left GSK after 25 years and launched my own company in April 2021 and in this past 20 months it feels all aspects of my life have become magnified and full of joy. Time with my family feels more resonant, my work fills me with joy every day, I love doing what I’m doing. I have been able to invest time in ArtWell, I take daily walks, I am part of this beloved UCCVF community. I feel that my life is magnified.
But what I was reflecting on earlier this year was that while I had a lot of external joys, I had somehow neglected the internal spiritual life and joy. So, I decided to take a spirituality class with the amazing Leigh Murray to begin to explore the internal, spiritual life through lectio divino, prayer, meditation, contemplation and sitting in the silence to reveal the words and messages and be spirit led. In one of those exercises, Leigh invites us to imagine a prayer and meditation room and, in that room, we create whatever we want. And in mine has a beautiful conservatory that looks out on the Scottish lochs and mountains and there in the conservatory is my mother. And she has been there every time I have imagined that room and it has brought me immense comfort and joy. So, we were also invited to rename our prayer and meditation room and of course, I renamed the room the Joy and Connection room. Acknowledging that the Joy and Connection in my life can also be an internal one, can also be a spiritual one.
In this season of Advent, as we all work so hard on creating the perfect Christmas joys for ourselves and our families with all the tasks – the decorating, the gifts, the cooking, the being together, the travelling, I‘d also invite you to consider the internal joy and to find the time and space to explore your own spiritual life and to find the Internal Joy, as well as celebrating the External joys. And remember that the Spirit of the season isn’t just around you, it has the potential to be within you. Merry Christmas.
(Delivered on Sunday, December 18, 2022 at the United Church of Christ at Valley Forge, by Angela Steel)
The Dandelion Way 