Joy - Secondhand

You can get it, but not directly.

Gravel Road to Wonder

I never saw my Papa without a thermos of coffee, a styrofoam cup, and a pack of Marlboro Reds. My grandparent’s house was a magical place. Tucked away in the backwoods of West Georgia along a gravel road—we made pilgrimage almost every summer.

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A double-wide trailer, linoleum floors, and wood paneled walls became a sacred space for me and so much of my family. There was laughter, card games, quiet sits on the front porch, football games, and a satellite tv with cartoon channels me and my brother had never heard of before. Glorious.

My Nani (Sicilian for grandma), was a renowned cook and baker. She made cuss words sound sweet and belly laughed with the best of em. She devoted the little space she had in her house to store crafts, games, and toys for all her grandkids.

She piled our pasta high, kept the brownies flowing, and melted our souls with her hugs. Nani passed away from cancer when I was becoming a teenager. She also liked the Marlboro Reds.

And that’s one thing I strangely miss the most about my grandparents home—the smoke. It was in everything. Shirts and sheets and drywall ceilings cannot be cleaned deeply enough to get rid of the amount of smoke my Nani and Papa filled that house with.

Joy Stained

As a child growing up in the 90’s, my grandparents knew the dangers of smoking next to children. They turned the front porch into “the zone” whenever we were visiting, but the house may as well have been made out of tobacco by that point.

It was the atmosphere that greeted you when you opened up the front screen door and the aroma that swirled around you as you drifted to sleep.

I miss the way that the smoke mixed with every other smell in the environment. Clean clothes smelled like detergent+smoke as you put them on out of the dryer. The living room table smelled like woodgrain+smoke as we sat down to play cards.

And a hug from Nani smelled like Nani+smoke.

Every object and person in the environment was uniquely itself and yet unified by one common scent.

Smoke.

Holy Smoke

I am convinced that joy is the smoke of Heaven. It permeates, infuses, and saturates the people and the place. Seeping into every fiber of existence—every corner of creation. But the joy of Heaven is just like smoke, it comes second hand.

There’s a story about a small tin can filled with pieces of moss, twigs, and flowers that C.S. Lewis saw his brother Warren holding as children in their garden. The tiny jungle in the palm of “Warnie’s” hand produced a bloom of wonder in little Lewis. He tried to examine his bubbling joy through the microscope of his logic, but it instantly vanished as a result.¹

This pattern would repeat itself multiple times in C.S.’s life. An experience of joy would overtake him, but as soon as he turned around to look at it through the lens of his rationality, it disappeared.

Lewis learned, as we all must, that joy does not exist on its own, but is always the byproduct of something greater—something higher than itself.

Joy cannot be plucked out of the present moment and put under a microscope. Instead it must be welcomed, received, and experienced like a kiss.

Joy cannot be separated from its source and continue to glow in the same way that a kiss cannot be separated from the lips of its lover and continue to enrapture.

Eventually, C.S came to believe that every waft of joy he found on earth was pointing him back to the Reality of One Eternal Flame. That all joys were leading him back to The Love of God in the same way that all smoke leads back to the fire from which it comes.

New Habit

I must confess that I told a bit of a lie earlier. I said that I never saw it, but there was a time when my Papa no longer carried his thermos of coffee, styrofoam cup, and a pack of Reds.

When my grandfather got his own cancer diagnosis, he knew that he didn’t want to go through the same chemotherapy process that my Nani experienced before she passed. Papa Keith opted instead for a radical elimination diet in an attempt to starve out his cancer.

He exchanged his thermos of coffee for a pitcher of tea and some homemade kombucha. His styrofoam cup was replaced by glass mason jars filled with all sorts of pickled and fermented concoctions. And his pack of Marlboro Reds was replaced by a low-dose nicotine vape, and eventually, nothing at all.

To all of our surprise, the great exchange worked. The doctor gave us the report that Papa’s tumors were shrinking and the plant-based diet was working. We were gifted several more years with the most contemplative man I have ever met.

Even though he had never read a book on prayer or meditation, my Papa was a living mystic. His quiet presence carried a gravity of kindness. A sort of spaciousness was created around him wherever he went. Sitting in silence next to him on the front porch, you felt like nothing needed to be spoken, but if anything was said, you knew there would be a listening ear to receive it.

There was one more habit that my Papa traded out before he died. A lifelong agnostic, he chose to be baptized in his final chapter. And he asked one very humbled grandson to do it for him.

Bringing tears of joy even now, years later, I believe that I got to see my Papa shed the habit of his old flesh that day—exchanging it for the righteous robes of Christ, in Whose Presence is the Fullness of Joy. A type of joy that sinks deeply into the skin. Like a Holy Smoke.

-Miss you Papa.

This article was written for a friend’s upcoming publication called a Joyful Ruckus and we will share a link to his work once released. Thanks again for this idea Daniel.

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1. C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life (New York: HarperOne, 2017).