Rejoice...

I’ve been attending church services and listening to sermons all my life – both the church and the home variety. Very few have stood in my mind and one of them was a Christmas message about Joy. Quite a Christmassy thing to think about – Joy. For the first time in my life, however, I heard the Christmas story of Joseph. Joseph,s first Christmas. From any point of view, it was rather grim.

Here was a man, engaged to be married to a girl, who was pregnant with a baby that wasn’t his. Worse still, it was a child of God. A pretty unreal tale for a man to swallow – let alone convince his family and friends about. And then, just when things were bad enough, he had to travel to a distant place – on a donkey, with a full term pregnant wife – to take part in a census.

And then he finds that there is no accommodation and he has to put up with her in a manger and then play midwife as well. Kind of hard on the man by any standards. I know that the modern day pictures of the manger have clean healthy cattle peeping benevolently at the baby and the entire manger free of dung and filled with light and angels. But honestly, that could hardly be true, could it? And that was Joseph’s first Christmas.

He must have been a pretty extraordinary man to watch his life unravel before his eyes and yet be joyful. In the end however, joy is a choice we make. And that made me think. I’ve seen people in really desperate circumstances joking around a meagre meal and a roofless shelter. The group of maids having a long gossip about their employers’ faults in the servant quarters seem to catch the spirit that is missing at 7 course meals.

But it’s not just the poor who seem to have made this choice really. For I’ve seen people from all walks of life goofing around. It doesn’t matter if they’ve lost a loved one or come from a dysfunctional home or are young or old or rich or poor. Some people just seem to have stumbled on to the secret of eternal giggling. Our first tenant (she was always called Anuamma – Anu’s mother) was a born giggler. She found everything in life amusing. Her son failing his exams, her daughter passing hers, a saucer getting irrevocably stuck in a bowl, a meal that turned out well, the several dishes that turned out badly, her mother-in-law’s sulks, her aches and pains and BP, her husband’s wretched business sense…. She was around 40 when I first met her. She is around 60 now and still laughing.

Alice, the ayurvedic masseuse who we hired for some post delivery care when Ken was born was another happy soul. She was the happiest person I ever met and next to Kevin was the one person that gave me undiluted joy. Apart from her massages and herbal baths with boiling water, her face and cheerfulness did me more good than anything else. Mama was harried because it is her nature to be permanently harried. Papa was disoriented because there was just too much going on – guests, cooking, guests, massages, guests, a grandson, guests, a harried wife…..

But Alice was the silver lining at all times. Her husband was paralysed below the hips and consequently helpless and irritable. Her sons seemed to do little part from play cricket some of the time and play the fool the rest. The entire family looked to her for money, comfort and home cooked food. I really didn’t see that there was a lot she had to smile about. But she didn’t just smile – she laughed, she grinned, she positively rejoiced in life.

Is it a dream of making good some day that amuses people like Anuamma and Alice? Is it the fun in beating life’s challenges? Is it an unselfishness in giving all that one can to support people around them? Is it the complete non-judgemental attitude that they bring into relationships and life? Is it a lack of standards? A lack of ambition? I honestly don’t know yet. All I know is that they seem to have decided on joy. And they rejoice in their choice.