"There's Still My Joy"

Grief and Joy Together

Photo by Les Anderson on Unsplash

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Since my husband and I lost our daughter Anne to cancer ten years ago, the holidays have been hard to navigate. The ubiquitous pop Christmas songs played in grocery and department stores—like “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” and “Home for the Holidays”—ring hollow. There was a time when such songs fueled my imagination and desires, but age has brought inevitable losses, and I notice that I belong to a great company of people who grieve over various kinds of loss—job, homes, loved ones, abilities, strength and health. We need songs that connect with grief as well as joy. When Noel released his album Somethin’ Special, I found such a song in “There’s Still My Joy.”  Written by Melissa Manchester (along with Beth Nielsen Chapman, and Matthew  Charles Rolling), It’s about finding peace and joy in spite of loss. 

A happy memory with Anne was a family trip to Scotland that included a visit to Iona, a small island in the Inner Hebrides on the western coast of Scotland. Our first stop was Dumfries, home of English poet Robert Burns. I remember this part of the journey because Anne wanted to celebrate her 18th birthday dinner in a Scottish pub. (The reason becomes clearer if you understand that the legal age for alcohol in Virginia is 21 and in Scotland it’s 18.) Upon arrival at our B&B, we asked the owner to recommend a pub within walking distance. Since we weren’t very well acquainted the Scottish accents, we thought she said “the rotten carrot.” It didn’t sound very appetizing, but what did we know?  So we wandered around the neighborhood for quite a while before we saw a pub sign that said, “The Rat and Parrot.” It was the right place, and food wasn’t bad. The next day we drove to Oban where we took a ferry to the island of Mull and the next day another ferry (this time without our rental car) on to Iona.

When we first stepped onto the shore of Iona, I understood why it has long been regarded by spiritual pilgrims as a “thin place.” Celtic Christianity speaks "thin places"  and “thin times” when the veil that separates us from the world beyond our reality becomes like gossamer and we see into the larger Reality. Then I began to recognize other geographic places that were “thin” to me—for example, the Blue Ridge Parkway—but I can’t go to them daily. When I became interested in transformative power of music, I came to realize some songs are powerful because they too are “thin places,” and they are available daily. For me, one of those “thin-place” songs is “There’s Still My Joy,” on Somethin’ Special: A Noel Paul Stookey Holiday Recollection.

It’s a song that says although reason won't bridge the supposed gap between grief and joy, the two can be held together.  As Noel points out, there is no logical connection between the verses about bringing a Christmas tree to the shore and the chorus says, "One tiny child can change the world, / one shining light can show the way / For all my grief for what  I've lost / There's still my joy on Christmas day."  Because he brings his experience of Love to this song rather than merely a belief system, the passion in his voice joins the lyric and the music to make it a "thin place."  After all, music and poetry are essential to richness of life because they can express what ordinary speech and logical discourse can't.

“There’s Still My Joy” holds joy and grief in tension. In a review of Somethin’ Special for Englewood Review of Books, I wrote this about Noel’s recording of the song.   

I think of the treble range of a piano as silver and the sound of a cello as gold.  It is keyboardist Michael McInnis’ genius to bring the two together. The piano is bright and hopeful and underlines the “still my JOY” and the cello is the gravitas, the honest facing of the inevitable losses that come the longer we live.  It is the gold of wisdom standing in creative tension with the joy that makes the joy credible. Stookey sings the song with such emotional range, grace, and vulnerability that it becomes an invitation for listeners to enter its safe space to feel and hold together both grief and joy. What a gift!

Shortly after the release of Noel’s album in 2018, I decided create a slide video for it. I was thinking that such a process could be both a healing meditation for me and a way to introduce others to his rendition of this moving song. Since Noel and Betty have lived in Downeast Maine since 1974, I thought it would be fitting to choose photos of the Maine coast. Some were taken by friends Jayne and Dave Ashworth, who also live in that area.  Some were taken by my husband Bill, and the rest are from a search of the UnSplash free photo site. As I was writing this essay and sharing with you my memory of a wonderful time with Anne, I realized how similar are coastal Maine and the western Hebrides. Maybe that was also reason for my choice of these photos.

May your Christmas day and the entire twelve days of Christmas be filled with peace and joy.
Jeanne 

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Connections

The modern day Iona Community describes itself as an international, ecumenical Christian movement working for justice and peace, the rebuilding of community and the renewal of worship.” It has 280 members on the island in the region and more than 2,000 associate members, young adults and friends in Scotland and around the world.

On a less serious note, if you wonder, as I did this morning, about the reason for the weird names of pubs in the U.K., here it is, straight from 60 Minutes

Vibrations

Enjoy Noel’s beautiful “There’s Still My Joy.”

Resonance

Reflect on the poem “On Joy and Sorrow” by Kalil Gibran.