Notes on joy

Dorothee Sölle ends the second major section of her book The Silent Cry with a chapter on mysticism and joy.  Here are a few snippets.

• Tthe Buddhist concept of “mindfulness” or “attentiveness” is being fully present now. An example: You can wash dishes to have clean dishes, or you can wash dishes to wash dishes.
• The Hasidim said, “Melancholy is the dust in the soul Satan spreads out.”
• Rumi: “Someone who is in God is drunk without wine and full without meat.”
• A woman who heard Sölle preach, wrote her: “teach the people whom you send to ‘study God’ to dance…teach them things other than–or not only—educated words.”
• “Joy wants to inhabit us and not merely drop in for a visit.”
• In praise “something …is loved out of darkness into light.”
• A midrash on Psalm 104: “the world becomes visible only where it is lifted up in song.”