Well. This week's New Yorker arrived, with this, the first paragraph in The Talk of the Town.

. . . [I]t has not been a happy week. A cocktail of emotions was being felt in these parts after last week's Presidential election, and the most potent ingredient was sadness. We've got the blues, and we've got 'em bad.

Why this sadness and happiness? What are they for? What tapestry do the happy and unhappy moments weave?

And anyway, what is happiness?

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These are questions essential to our living, and never more than in particularly challenging times.

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Now, there's a new thing out there called "Positive Psychology," pioneered by Martin Seligman. He acknowledges what is surely part of his own motivation behind his pioneering work: he finds optimism difficult. Optimism and positive emotions don't come easily or naturally for him. So he made a life-work out of studying these matters. Maybe you've seen some of his books, like Learned Optimism and Authentic Happiness.

He and his colleagues observed that:

Happier people are smarter about making important real-life decisions.

Positive moods jolt us into an entirely different way of thinking than the negativity of a funk.

If a chilly, negative mood activates a "battle-stations" mode of thinking in us that focuses on what is wrong and then eliminating it, a positive mood buoys people into a way of thinking that is creative, tolerant, constructive, generous, undefensive and lateral. It's looking not for what is wrong, but what is right.

And happy people live longer and they're healthier.

But . . .

There is such a thing as "depressive realism." It doesn't make people more successful, doesn't draw friends to them, but sometimes it sees what positive emotions can't see. For instance, their own competence. Depressive people are more accurate judges of how much skill they have — whereas happy people think they're way more skillful than others judge them to be.

Happy people are lopsided in their perceptions of success and failure: when things go well, they take credit, , they think they're good at everything, and they believe the good thing will last.

And if things don't go well, they blame somebody else, they think it was just this one little mistake and doesn't mean anything more; they think the rough patch will pass soon and no last.

The ability a depressive mood gives you to see with merciless realism extends way beyond that. Depressive people often dare to see the truth about their lives and about the world around them because they have nothing left to lose. There's a fearless honesty. And the pain around them is real to them. I have known people who seemed to take in the pain of the world and feel it in a way that you could feel their sadness immediately.

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Among the world's religions there's insight into all this. Buddhist psychology looks at all this from a different angle.

The Tibetan word for Buddhahood has two syllables: the first, refers to someone who has cleared away all everything that obscures clear vision; and the second refers to one who has developed every possible excellence, actualized the goodness that Buddhists see at the fundamental core of our consciousness.

And so Buddhism tries to equip a person to live with eyes wide open in the most difficult circumstances, yet live in an inward freedom and peace, not confused, not distracted, not unaware.

Maybe today you're angry. Buddhism says you can transform raw anger into effective action. And it draws a distinction between anger that's fueled by a skewed and biased perception, on the one hand, — and clear, forceful — even wrathful — action against wrong, on the other.

The Dalai Lama speaks of two kinds of perceptual errors: the first is the nihilistic error that denies existence of something that does exist; the second is the substantialist error that asserts or reifies the existence of something that does not exist.¹ Here's what he says:

You need to counteract [a perceptual error] with something that ascertains the nature of reality — not simply with an impression, a desire, or a prayer. These afflicted views have arisen through a process of thinking, and so you [might] be quite confident they are true. Therefore, they need to be counteracted by the application of right insight so that the certainty you were holding previously can be undermined and shattered. So the Buddhist would say distorted views need to be undermined by undistorted views.

The goal of clear vision and of transforming emotions so as to mobilize them as energies for the tasks that call to us — isn't so easy to attain. But it's absolutely central to our spiritual challenge in these times.

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"Happiness," "optimism," and "depression" are tricky words. Now note that Martin Seligman, the Happiness expert, is quite insistent that he doesn't mean anything superficial by "happiness." He isn't talking about mere "pleasure." He doesn't mean shortcuts to feeling good. You can't get there by means of chocolate or shopping. Pleasure's fine but it isn't authentic happiness. No, that comes when we call on our own best strengths to rise to an occasion and meet a challenge. It's sort of like Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's concept of "Flow." You engage your whole self — your best capacities — until you lose all concept of self and time. The challenge is neither too great nor too easy but fits you.

And that Martin Seligman calls "gratification," something to be distinguished from "pleasure," which is fine, but far less satisfying.

Authentic happiness comes when we "call on our own best strengths." By strengths, he isn't talking about talents, IQ, good looks, wealth, any of those things. He's talking about character: valor, originality, fairness, kindness, wisdom and knowledge, love and humanity, justice, self-control, spirituality and transcendence — to be precise.

Now, these strengths of character can take us on long journeys through some pretty demanding things.

It's not the happiness of luck and wealth and success, which, we know, can leave a person miserable, and which can vanish in an instant. It's a kind of attainment, a spiritual kind of success in living.

It can be a path of considerable pain, this path of real, soul-deep joy. It means prevailing in whatever inward struggle your life presents by discerning what your central strengths are and bringing them to bear.

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Now, this isn't the message about happiness you'll get from commercial culture, nor are these the principles upon which the executives at Enron sought to achieve happiness. But ask yourself: When have you been happy? — I mean, the most genuinely, deeply gratified — known the greatest joy?

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Joy and woe are woven fine.

It is right it should be so;
Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the world we safely go.

For some, the heights and depths and breadths and intensity of the joys and woes they feel are great; they touch things that are constitutionally beyond the reach of others who have a more even temperament.

The American essayist and poet George Edward Woodberry wrote about creative people, specifically poets, this way:

The sign of the poet, then, is that by passion he enters into life more than other men. That is his gift — the power to live. . . . They lived before they sang. . . . and genius burns brighter in its own flames.²

"In these flashing revelations of grief's wonderful fire," wrote Melville,

we see all things as they are; and though, when the electric element is gone,the shadows once more descend, and the false outlines of objects again return; yet not with their former power to deceive.³

In these times, it's tempting to drown our consciousness in the River Lethe, the mythological River of Oblivion — and just forget. It is so hard, so very hard, to bear the appalling truth of our times, and so, a few days ago, at least 59 million people decided not to believe it, but to put their faith in reassuring promises that we're on the right track, that we're actually snuffing out rather than fanning terrorism, and there is no climate crisis and, well, I hardly need to remind you, do I?

But how can we bear it with eyes open and thrive, and find happiness?

And the answer, I think, is to be here wholly, to feel the anguish, yes, retain our consciousness with its pain, and bring our highest and best to bear on what confronts us — both outwardly and inwardly — whether it's this crisis or something more personal — until in whatever way is given to us, we triumph. That's not just about winning an election, it's a life-orientation. And we're no longer deceived, we see clearly, and truly, and every moment we transform despair into defiant joy is a triumph, deep and rewarding. And joyful.

Sometimes it takes situations of supreme extremity to jolt us out of our false comfort. Sometimes it takes a very stark revelation of the situation. Sometimes that means taking on the stance, or maybe rather the abandon, of Janis Joplin's phrase, "freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose." Maybe you've been there — when, unable to comfort yourself with anything less, you stood and did the thing that had to be done, spokethe word that had to be spoken.

There is a human solidarity of pain, and sometimes it means reaching into that solidarity and finding some fundamental richness there.

Sometimes it means, in the midst of the stress, to quiet your mind and hear your own inner wisdom. A couple of weeks ago Pam Seeberg led a meditation experience here in which each of us was invited to open ourselves to some inner wisdom figure — initiate a conversation with an inner figure representing inner truth. I can imagine there were a few surprises. For one, it was Walt Whitman — and the wisdom he offered? He simply laughed, heartily, from somewhere deep inside — laughed.

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We need to know how to live in the realms of both joy and woe, and to trust them, trust them both, weave them fine. Feel the weight of the wrong, the injustice, the hurt. Find the silken twine of joy:

And then bring our strengths to the struggle.

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There are things pessimism cannot see.

There are things optimism cannot see.

Let us open our eyes to all truth.

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So there you are. A city, a congregation, a household needs both capacities; needs to be at home in both realms. An individual human needs both. Joy and woe, optimist and realist, must have their place, get their due attention, hold an honored place in us. Hold them with respect.

There is a truth about optimism and hope. It's not something you can conjure up just because somebody says to you "smile!" It is an inner work, to be cultivated like a garden. It's a force of life welling up, growing things. It's a hidden tide that lifts you and carries you along. I cannot tell you where it comes from.

But I know it won't abandon you just because you dared to face the truth of a situation. No, it's only when you do that its visitation begins.

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In the months before my coming out, both as a post-Christian and as a gay man, I was overtaken by a massive depression. The truth — about me, about the faith with which I'd grown up — seemed more than I was equipped to handle. What kind of god would do such a thing to me? would be so cruel? I was automatically condemned just because of who I was. At the same time the pillars of my faith were crumbling. The more I studied the Greek and Hebrew Bible, the less credibility it had, the more preposterous the whole structure of my faith.

I know quite a few people who never went through such an anguish. They found comfort in superficial remedies: couldn't face the truth about the barbarous aspects of the Bible; couldn't bear the truth about themselves; couldn't bear the truth about society's hate and bigotry. But I felt it, felt the depths of the anguish and contradiction.

And then my guts started to speak in a series of dreams. There were many, powerful, vivid, utterly transformative. One of them was a passage to liberation, the liberation that only such a crisis can bring. I was led into the church that was to be my life, a great cathedral, and — right in that great nave — shown the bed where I would sleep in my life in this cathedral which was my life. And as I lay there, looking up at the great, shining vault of the dome above, I noticed, to my horror, a crack, a terrible, spreading breach in the great vault above, and I knew that the whole thing was about to collapse of its own weight. There was nothing to do but to run out, immediately — and I did, and I was free, and I awoke freed from a lifelong oppression. The details still had to be worked out but I had been freed and it took this crisis, this journey. And I knew a joy I'd never known, ever before.

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It manifests itself, this Mystery, as a creative force, and then you know your existence is one with the life of this Universe, a roaring engine of creativity. It's a joy that sees clearly, sometimes through tears, and overcomes despair because it is itself a force, great and powerful. Sometimes it takes you on far journeys through great sorrows and troubles to bring you home again laden with treasure you never imagined and energies and wisdom to subvert the processes of destruction, transforming what had once seemed impervious to your best efforts.

All this begins with the discovery of something essential within you. May this be a place that honors and supports that journey of discovery.

Copyright © 2004 F. Jay Deacon. All rights reserved.

¹ Dalai Lama, narrated by Daniel Goleman. Destructrive Emotions: How can we overcome them? New York: Bantam Books, 2003, p. 91.
² George Edward Woodberry, quoted in M. Wilkinson, The Way of the Makers. New York: MacMillan, 1925, p. 13.
³ Herman Melville. Pierre: Or, The Ambiguities. New York: Signet Classic, 1964, p. 114.
See also: Martin E.P. Seligman. Authentic Happiness. London: Nicholas Brealey, 2003.
—————————. Learned Optimism. New York: Alfred Knopf, 1991.

Meditate

Bruised and exalted, we come
With hearts full of all the beauty and all the hurt
of all our days.

And, trembling, with hope,
we gather
and confess our fear
and sorrow
and untruth | falsity

And quietly, silently
We listen
that beyond and beneath these things
we shall hear
speaking in silence
speaking with calm assurance
The truth of ourselves
sounding from the heart of us
from the heart of all Being
resounding with sure and resiliant strength
resonating with a Great Energy
at the core of all things
that makes and renews
all the life of this world of life
that fills the moments of life
the turning points
the hard places
the great openings in hardened walls
fills them with a radiant promise
of what might yet arise from the rubble:

Let fears dissolve
into love of Being
and a subtle recognition
of the power that inhabits this moment
that is in us
that is us

In this silence . . .

Readings

Rabindranath Tagore, "Joy"

And Joy is Everywhere;
It is in the Earth's green covering of grass;
In the blue serenity of the Sky;
In the reckless exuberance of Spring;
In the severe abstinence of gray Winter;
In the Living flesh that animates our bodily frame;
In the perfect poise of the Human figure, noble and upright;
In Living;
In the exercise of all our powers;
In the acquisition of Knowledge;
in fighting evils...
Joy is there Everywhere.

From William Blake, Augeries of Innocence, 16

To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.

A robin redbreast in a cage
Puts all heaven in a rage.

A horse misused upon the road
Calls to heaven for human blood.
Each outcry of the hunted hare
A fibre from the brain does tear.

It is right it should be so;
Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the world we safely go.

Joy and woe are woven fine,
A clothing for the soul divine.
Under every grief and pine
Runs a joy with silken twine.

The strongest poison ever known
Came from Caesar's laurel crown.
Nought can deform the human race
Like to the armour's iron brace.

Every night and every morn
Some to misery are born,
Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight.

Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.