“All joy reminds. It is never a possession, always a desire for something longer ago, or further away or still ‘about to be’.”
“Joy must have the stab, the pang, the inconsolable longing.”
“(Joy) is a by-product. It’s very existence presupposes that you desire not it but something other or outer.”
-CS Lewis
My lingering joy starts with my teenaged hobby of astronomy. It was that first-love science interest of one who later became a scientist, but one of a different sort (a chemist). My hobby was built along with my friend Pat who got a 2” refractor telescope. I got a 6” reflector in 1980 and used it frequently, and living in the country helped as I eagerly learned the night sky. Observation was my interest. I never got into astrophotography, though others would frequently ask why not. When I was 24 I hauled my telescope along with my few possessions as I moved to Wisconsin from Mississippi and to several suburban and small-town homes along the way. I used it sporadically over the next 30 years including when my homeschooled son, Noah, did astronomy as his science class one year in high school. Still, astronomy holds a special affection for me that even my long chemistry career cannot dislodge – like a first crush I never got over. I’m reminded of every time I look at the night sky. Yet my long-held interest in astronomy became ever a low and slow-burning ember. The responsibilities of life took hold. My old interest needed a rekindling; my “desire for something long ago or further away” seemed to recede further from view, turning into a vague sentimentality with no motive force.
But a recent friendship has helped remind me of and rejuvenated my old joy, but it also served to kindle a new joy of a desire for something “still about to be”. That early disinterest in astrophotography was an untapped purpose for my scope (and me), but photography was already the wheelhouse for my new friend, Gabe. With his burgeoning interest and joy in photography and a thirst for expanding that to astrophotography, we have joined forces using my astronomy knowledge and old telescope to tap into a new aspect of joy for me and deepen my old joy. Gabe is feeding his photographic joy and his new joy of what a telescope can add to his interest.
After some experimental flailing and missteps using PVC pipe and duct tape to adapt his camera to my scope, we pulled it all together and got some great (for us) photos of a waxing gibbous moon on a cold December night. Our excitement was palpable.
The next morning I awoke awash with an indescribable joy; a satisfaction of a prior unfulfilled culmination to my old hobby. As I reported to Gabe, “I’ve enjoyed my telescope for decades, but last night reopened and deepened a joy I first sensed 42 years ago. I’m seeing now what CS Lewis described as joy being a surprising glimpse of what joys lie ahead. I am somehow now shedding a tear of joy”. I later summed up the experience to Gabe saying, “Joy is not exuberant happiness, but exuberant satisfaction….this is so odd.”
It is no wonder CS Lewis, the lifelong sleuth for the elusive nature of joy titled his early life autobiography “Surprised by Joy”. I too was surprised that night and the next morning. How true he was to also say, “one second of joy is worth twelve hours of pleasure.”
My late wife, when nearing the end of her earthly journey, was drawn by a quote by Telihard de Chardin which she saw on a doctor’s door and insisted on getting a photocopy of it to hang in our bedroom:
“Joy is the most infallible sign of the presence of God”
She had a keen foresight toward her ultimate infallible joy as “the stab, the pang, the inconsolable longing” for she desired “something other and outer”. She soon thereafter had that joy completely fulfilled. Our pastor included that quote in his funeral sermon. That quote still hangs in my house. I now have lately gotten myself a dim glimpse of joy through a moonlit night and the infallible joy that lies beyond the moon. And I can look forward to future surprising joys, some of which, I may hope, are to be discovered though my telescope and my friend’s camera.