The evangelical writer Ann Voskamp got her start as part of the “Mommy Blogger” movement, one of a number of gifted voices who chronicled the joys, challenges and foibles of motherhood in our time. She certainly has the street cred: she and her farmer husband have seven kids, and I believe they’ve all been homeschooled. I’m only familiar with one of her books, One Thousand Gifts, which was a bestseller in the evangelical world when it was published fourteen years ago. I’m not exactly in her target demographic, but she’s on my radar for having taken heat from some segments of the evangelical world.
Her “crime”? Her writing is seen as too mystical.
Hmmm… they say “mystical” like it’s a bad thing.
One Thousand Gifts has a message that won’t rock any boats in the contemplative world. It’s a book about gratitude and healing and finding God in the ordinary moments of life; it’s about discovering that spirituality is ultimately about intimacy, loving intimacy, with the Spirit.
If that’s what mysticism is, well, yeah: bring on the mystics.
There are plenty of little nuggets of wisdom strewn throughout the book, but given my stubborn belief that too many Christians suffer from a deficit of joy, naturally this would catch my eye:
Joy is a flame that glimmers only in the palm of the open and humble hand. — Anne Voskamp
I’m reminded of the wise words of the Desert Abba Joseph, that I featured on this newsletter within the last month (see my post “Why Not Become Fire”):
Standing up, the elder stretched out his hands to heaven, and his fingers became like ten lamps of fire; and he said to him, “If you are willing, become entirely like fire.”
If the “fire” we are called to become, the fire of joy? And does it require an open hand (and, we may presume, an open heart?). Voskamp goes on to muse that in a hand “clenched tight,” joy is “snuffed out.” That’s a little dualistic for my tastes, for I don’t believe joy is alien to righteous anger. But I certainly can understand that even a sacred anger typically doesn’t feel joyful. So while I don’t want to insist that joy is only available to those privileged enough to hold their hands open, it’s worth considering that even the most vibrant activist needs their Sabbath day, their time of leisure: and when we meet our contemplative moments with hands held humbly open, we make ourselves receptive to that second fruit of the Spirit.
Quotations source:
Voskamp, Ann. One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are (p. 177). Kindle Edition.
John Wortley, ed. The Book of the Elders: Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Systematic Collection (Cistercian Studies Series 240) (p. 217-218). Kindle Edition.