"Honeymoon with Big Joy" #22

Featuring Tracy K. Smith, Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, and Stay at Home Choir

Oct 31, 2023

Before we get to the last offering of “Honeymoon with Big Joy,” one final reminder:

Join us TONIGHT (Tuesday, October 31) for “Rafter Refuge”!

6:30-8:00PM Central (7:30 ET, 5:30 MT, 4:30 PT)

Let’s close this Deep Dive with a time of voluntary sharing. (It’s fine just to listen!) Come and reflect with other Rafters on “Honeymoon with Big Joy.” Registration is required for this celebration.

Set your intention

Take a moment to name the primary intention you have for this month-long deep dive and/or this particular session. Take a quiet moment to center yourself in that intention.

En-JOY the music

Read the poem

For our final reading of this Deep Dive, absorb former US Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith's new English adaptation of “Ode to Joy”—the poem by Friedrich Schiller that Beethoven incorporated into his Ninth Symphony. The performance in the video above makes use of Smith’s rendition.

In Beethoven’s time, Schiller’s poem was a “radical call for equality, freedom, and brotherhood.” Tracy K. Smith was commissioned by Carnegie Hall to reimagine that poem as a “contemporary meditation on community, politics, and spirit.” She put joy at the heart of the text.

I invite you to read this poem twice—aloud, at least once. You may also listen to Tracy K Smith’s reading of the poem, perhaps with your eyes closed.

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published


ODE TO JOY
Tracy K. Smith

O friend, my heart has tired 
Of such darkness. 
Now it vies for joy. 

Joy, bright God-spark born of Ever,
Daughter of fresh paradise— 
Where you walked once now walk rancor, 
Greed, suspicion, anger, fright. 
Joy, the breeze off all that’s holy, 
Pure with terror, wild as flame. 
Make us brothers, give us comfort, 
Bid us past such fear and hate. 

If you’ve loved another’s beauty,
If you’ve craved the warmth of flesh, 
If your spirit is invested in another’s sense of worth, 
Lift your voice to touch my voice now, 
Let our song bring joy to earth. 
Lift your voice to touch my voice now, 
Let our song bring joy to earth. 

Joy like water, milk of mothers. 
Kind and wicked all deserve 
Joy’s compassion freely given, 
Joy which can’t be sold or earned. 
In the depths of blackest soil,
In the lightless atmosphere, 
In the atom and the ether, 
Animating all that is. 

Let us feel it, let us heed it, 
Let us seek its deepest kiss. 
Let us live our brief lives mining 
That which joy alone can give. 

Battered planet, home of billions, 
Our long shadow stalks your face. 
All we’ve fractured, all we’ve stolen, 
All we’ve sought blind to your grace. 

Earth, forgive us, claim us, let us 
Live in humble thanks and joy. 
Let our hearts wake from our stupor, 
Let us praise you in one voice. 


(found at this link)

Contemplate/Create

Use any of these questions however you wish—e.g., as openings for meditation or prayer, as prompts for journaling or poetry-writing, as sparks for drawing or painting, as catalysts for change-making . . . You may also ignore my questions altogether to go off in other directions!

The opening lines of Smith’s poem suggest that “joy” is something for which our hearts must “vie.” In other words, it is hard-won amidst “the darkness.” Would you agree? How do you embrace the struggle for joy?
The poem suggests that joy can unite all of us who live on this planet and also heal our relationship with Earth. How might that happen? What good does joy awaken in us, express through us, make us capable of?
“Joy . . . animating all that is”: Entertain the radical idea that joy is the fundamental energy pulsing through the universe. Do you wish to “live [y]our brief life mining / That which joy alone can give”? How might you do that in the days ahead?

Want to visit with other Rafters in the Deep Dive?

Here are two options: either leave a comment on this post using the button, or join the chat thread dedicated to this Deep Dive. (Note: if you haven’t created a Substack profile yet, you’ll be asked to do so before you can comment or chat.)