http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHNAFRg6jYA
The Be Good Tanyas video I posted yesterday was kind of a downer. So I thought I’d post another one that sounds a more hopeful note. While the amount of suffering in the world is enormous, we can’t let our awareness of that fact rob us of our ability to experience happiness and joy. (Then) Cardinal Ratzinger addressed this issue in his book length interview Salt of the Earth:
Something I constantly notice is that unembarrassed joy has become rarer. Joy today is increasingly saddled with moral and ideological burdens, so to speak. When someone rejoices, he is afraid of offending against solidarity with the many people who suffer. I don’t have any right to rejoice, people think, in a world where there is so much misery, so much injustice.
I can understand that. There is a moral attitude at work here. But this attitude is nonetheless wrong. The loss of joy does not make the world better – and, conversely, refusing joy for the sake of suffering does not help those who suffer. The contrary is true. The world needs people who discover the good, who rejoice in it and thereby derive the impetus and courage to do good. Joy, then, does not break with solidarity.
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