Joy: An Embodied Presence
In one of Dr. Barbara Holmes’ (1943–2024) final teachings for CAC’s Living School: Essentials of Engaged Contemplation, she focused on joy as a practice and presence:
Joy as embodied presence is an abiding awareness of the gift given to each and every one of us, no matter our circumstances in life. I want to begin talking about joy embodied from scriptural sources. In John 15:11, Jesus says, “These things I have spoken to you that my joy may remain in you and that your joy may be full.” In 1st Thessalonians 5:16–18, we read, “Let your joy be your continual feast. Make your life a prayer, and in the midst of everything, be always giving thanks, for this is God’s perfect plan for you in Jesus Christ.” In James 1:2–3, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.”
Brothers and sisters, true joy is a limitless, life-defining, transformative reservoir waiting to be tapped. It requires only the utmost surrender and like love, it’s a choice to be made that ultimately transcends time. True joy is not circumstantial. It doesn’t require that things be going well. You can have joy during imprisonment as Nelson Mandela did, or while impoverished, as many do in Haiti. Joy is even available in war-torn parts of the globe today.
Make no mistake about it, there’s a real difference between happiness and joy. The sources of happiness are very fleeting. Buy something new and see how fleeting it is. That new car, that new house, they lose their luster in a mere few weeks. True joy is foundational. It’s a basis of God’s love for us, sealed with the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Could there be any firmer foundation?
Holmes reveals how our egos keep us from experiencing true joy:
Finding your joy may also require that you dismantle the false construct that your life is about you. Now, it’s not our fault that we believe that the journey is all about us. From the moment we’re born, all eyes are on us. Attention is necessary to make certain that we’re breathing, that we have a safe passage through the womb, and adoring parents who continue that focus or not. Somehow, we begin to believe that everything is about our comfort, our future, our well-being, our pain. As I’m entering the latter phase of my life, I’m finally beginning to realize that the scaffolding of self that was erected from birth was a necessary but temporary support. It was a place I could hang my dreams and my visions, but it was never meant to be permanent. It’s only by faith and by our journey through a few dark nights of the soul do we relinquish the overwhelming chatter of ego, a feat that is all struggle and many setbacks.
Stavanger, Norway. (from Diana Butler Bass)
June 14, 2025
Dear Cottage friends,
I’m writing to you from Norway. And this Sunday Musing has become a Sunday rumination. Because of everything.
Around the world, the news is bad. Very bad. Donald Trump has gone full authoritarian — and officials in his administration are talking about “liberating” California from their elected government and have sent military troops to occupy Los Angeles. From what I can gather, immigrant round-ups have escalated. As I write, Israel is attacking Iran. And we’re only hours away from Trump’s self-aggrandizing military birthday parade in Washington, DC. And “No Kings Day” rallies have barely begun in protest. We just heard of political assassinations in Minnesota. Everything is on a razor’s edge.
I’m not there. Instead, I’m staring out the window of my hotel and looking over the North Sea. My heart is heavy; my head hurts. I wonder what comes next, when I return home next week. Several people have texted notes like, “It is scary. Really scary.”
I wish I could tell you that everything will be alright. But I can’t. I don’t know that. I would, however, like to share a story with you.
Before arriving here, we spent two days in Amsterdam. And, of course, we visited the Rijksmuseum, one of the most beautiful museums in Europe.
It wasn’t my first time at the museum. I visited Amsterdam once before — in 1980. My first and only visit to the city and its glorious museum was forty-five years ago. Forty-five years! Then, I was a starry-eyed, optimistic 21 year-old wondering what the years ahead would bring and how my life might unfold.
During that long-ago trip, I loved exploring the Rijksmuseum — and was enthralled by Rembrandt’s paintings. No work, however, spoke more strongly to me than “Jeremiah Lamenting the Destruction of Jerusalem.”
I don’t know exactly what moved me so deeply then. Perhaps it was my latent fear that the world would end before my life really began — childhood fears of nuclear destruction, teen-age evangelical fears of the Rapture and Armageddon. I stared at it for a long time, transfixed by the face of the prophet. An old man, surrounded by the wreckage of the city he loved and tried to warn, full of grief. It was too late. All was lost.
And so, forty-five years later, I stood in front of the painting that I never forgot, an image that etched itself in my soul-memory. I looked at it again, remembering then. The ancient lamentation went through my mind:
A horrible and shocking thing
has happened in the land:
The prophets prophesy lies,
the priests rule by their own authority,
and my people love it this way.
But what will you do in the end?
My husband interrupted, “Does it still speak to you?”
I replied, “Differently. I’m his age now. I’m probably as old as the model for the painting. And I feel like I’m looking out on a landscape of destruction.”
He glanced at me. “It feels too close to home,” I said flatly.
I turned to walk away, lamenting my own country and the years that have flown by, when I noticed that Jeremiah wasn’t alone. He was hanging next to another painting, one that hadn’t even registered with me forty-five years ago:
The second painting is Rembrandt’s “Old Woman Reading, Probably the Prophetess Anna.”
She pulled me over. She drew me. As I had stared at the Jeremiah painting decades ago, I became lost in this one. Her kindness, her curiosity, and her diligence at reading. Her aged hand tenderly following the words on the page, no doubt her eyes failing.
Anna. Luke’s gospel tells her story in a few words:
There was also a prophet, Anna the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was of a great age, having lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, then as a widow to the age of eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshiped there with fasting and prayer night and day. At that moment she came, and began to praise God and to speak about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.
Jeremiah and Anna. Two prophets. One lamenting destruction; the other awaiting a promise. Compared to her “of a great age,” Jeremiah was a youngster! She had seen much in her long life, and lost much, but she never gave up. She trusted and acted on hope — and she was, eventually, rewarded.
Jeremiah and Anna side-by-side, lament and hope. Grief and joy.
Once Jeremiah moved me to tears. And now? Anna does. The world is full of Jeremiahs these days — me included! But how I long to be that old woman who never stopped seeking after the promise. Waiting, waiting, waiting. Decade after decade. And then — finally — the Child.
Both prophets. One overseeing an end. The other glimpsing a beginning. Both are necessary. Both are spiritual callings. But we have too much of one right now and too little of the other.
As far as we know, Rembrandt painted Jeremiah once. And he produced at least eight versions of Anna — three painting and five etchings. Her story is so much shorter and simpler. Did he, too, as he grew older, tire of lament and long ever more for the promise of hope? Did he find more power in the old woman prophet? Is hope harder to craft?
It certainly appears to be more elusive.
I know which calls my heart now. It has taken forty-five years, but I finally understand.
Love,
Diana
