Joy and Justice
Partners in reclaiming freedom
A month ago I joined colleagues to present a workshop at the Alliance of Baptists Annual Gathering. Rev. Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas, in her keynote speech, talked about how disorienting these times are and how intentional disorientation leads to despair.
I came home from that conference and wrote a song that was prompted by two of her four key points to reclaim our freedom. Here’s her closing summary:
And so we return to the question with which we began.
What does it mean to reclaim our freedom in these disorienting times intended to create and cultivate our despair?
It means refusing to be defined by systems of domination that betray the sacred worth of God’s people.
It means cultivating joy as an act of resistance to that which deprives others of the divine joy of life.
It means preserving and proclaiming the sacred stories that others would erase.
It means being accountable to a moral imaginary rooted in the values of God.
In her discussion of how enslaved Africans kept on fighting for freedom in the face of those who kept/keep denying their right to freedom, she emphasized joy as a divine right and as an act of resistance.
In her explanation of a moral imaginary, she said:
The moral imaginary is about more than imagination. It is the reflexive moral impulse of a people. It is how a society instinctively understands justice and injustice.
What came to me was the realization that joy and justice imagined have an equal partnership. This is not a cause and effect relationship. While joy does spark our moral imagination, and justice is certainly a cause for joy, they are both necessary qualities to nurture (along with sacred worth and sacred stories). Joy is as necessary as justice, and while one may contribute to the other, we cannot truly have one without the other in our search to reclaim our freedom to be the whole and sacred beings that we all are.
This was the song that came.
Joy and Justice by Nancy Willbanks
Joy comes in the morning and justice comes now. Joy comes in at midday and justice comes now. Joy comes in the evening and justice comes now. We need justice, justice and joy! Imagine justice in the morning and joy right now; justice at midday and joy right now; justice in the evening and joy right now. We'll have justice, justice and joy!
Noticing and Reflections
I don’t know about you, but I have gotten caught up in those feelings of despair lately (as I reflected here this week), and it took me a minute (or a month) to circle back to this song—I couldn’t really bring myself to record a song about joy and justice, although it kept popping into my head, as if nudging me.
You may notice a reference to Psalm 30:5: “Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning.” I decided that neither joy nor justice were bound to a time of day AND we needed the reminders all the time and even more urgently, right now, to see and seek joy and justice.
What keeps us from joy or traps us in sorrow, not knowing there is need and room for both? Who waits for justice, and why is waiting for God to act seen as good or necessary?
How do we lift joy and justice together, knowing that we need both?
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