Beautiful, thanks! Indeed, "this doesn’t mean dancing through life in a constant state of euphoria," but Alexis Zorba believed in dancing precisely when his heart was broken. https://youtu.be/BS0w3Wkric8?si=MazbUteFuUZxoMDM
Magnificent, Michelangelo, thank you! And yes, how we handle heartbreak is as individual as how we handle euphoria, and I am entirely in favor of dancing to express either or both. Perhaps what I have called the habit of joy inclines us to dance amid heartbreak!
There are also, of course, people temperamentally as well as, one might say, kinenetically uninclined to dance in euphoria as well as in heartbreak. I don’t want anyone to feel broken for lack of dancing, any more than for feeling stressed or depressed.
Faith as a habit is explicit in the traditional classification of faith as a theological virtue, since the virtues are all habits. Once you see that, I think it becomes natural to see gratitude as a habit, and joy is inseparable from gratitude. I would have been inclined to talk about gratitude here, but I’m trying to be brief—and I wrote about gratitude and happiness for my parish just a few weeks ago. (Joy and happiness are not the same thing, but they’re connected, and I can only do so much in an eight-minute homily!)
Beautiful, thanks! Indeed, "this doesn’t mean dancing through life in a constant state of euphoria," but Alexis Zorba believed in dancing precisely when his heart was broken. https://youtu.be/BS0w3Wkric8?si=MazbUteFuUZxoMDM
Magnificent, Michelangelo, thank you! And yes, how we handle heartbreak is as individual as how we handle euphoria, and I am entirely in favor of dancing to express either or both. Perhaps what I have called the habit of joy inclines us to dance amid heartbreak!
There are also, of course, people temperamentally as well as, one might say, kinenetically uninclined to dance in euphoria as well as in heartbreak. I don’t want anyone to feel broken for lack of dancing, any more than for feeling stressed or depressed.
The idea of faith and joy as being habits is so interesting. So much of what we do is habit and how that habit of what we do becomes who we are.
Faith as a habit is explicit in the traditional classification of faith as a theological virtue, since the virtues are all habits. Once you see that, I think it becomes natural to see gratitude as a habit, and joy is inseparable from gratitude. I would have been inclined to talk about gratitude here, but I’m trying to be brief—and I wrote about gratitude and happiness for my parish just a few weeks ago. (Joy and happiness are not the same thing, but they’re connected, and I can only do so much in an eight-minute homily!)
https://greydanus.substack.com/p/living-in-reality-and-gratitude-a
Thank you for the explanation.