by Kathleen Kastilahn

Rejoice. And choice. The two words aren’t ones we expect to find used together. When something wonderful happens—a son’s engagement, a friend’s negative biopsy report, our being tapped for a long-awaited promotion—we rejoice. Even something as trite (but true) as a late summer sunset brings joy to our souls.

Rejoicing. Joyful. Isn’t that the way we want to greet each new day? But minds filled with to-do lists, hearts busy with wishes and souls heavy with worries–these all distract, and we can come to the end of the day having missed out on joy. What we forget is that we have a choice to involve ourselves in activities that can lead us to rejoicing. It’s not a passive proposition, waiting for the next good thing to come our way. It requires our initiative.

It starts with our paying attention to our lives: What are we good at? Making soup? Reading with children? Organizing events? Painting—walls or landscapes? Ask how might these skills help others? Where are they needed? In their book Spiritual Literacy: Reading the Sacred in Everyday Life, Mary Ann and Fred Brussat point out that “[O]ften the most fulfilling acts of service are the ones that grow naturally out of our God-given talents, interests, and skills.” And in its companion volume, Spiritual Rx: Prescriptions for Living a Meaningful Life, the Brussats point to joy as an essential spiritual practice. They describe it as “the deep satisfaction we know when we are able to serve others and be glad for their good fortune.”

Clearly, it’s our choice to pursue joy. This isn’t a solo endeavor, however. Never has been. Rabbinic teachers have said joy comes from “collaborating with God in our destiny.” With such a partner, surely we can be on our way to rejoicing. And each of us will find her own way. Consider the paths of four women, each very different but all leading to rejoicing.

It worked out

Monica Perin had known about the Literacy Council of Fort Bend County in Texas for several years and knew, too, it offered classes in English as a second language. The suburban Houston woman wasn’t drawn to investigate, however, until last fall when she realized she just wasn’t “busy enough.” She teaches two classes in communications law at the University of Houston.

And she loves volunteering weekly at the local food pantry, an ecumenical endeavor supported by area congregations including New Hope, Missouri City, where she is a longtime member. Still, she had time and she was getting depressed.

When the literacy program director learned Perin, 64, was a retired journalist, she asked her to start teaching a writing class for people who were fluent in English, but needed instruction in composition and grammar.

“I’m teaching where to put punctuation, not to leave fragments,” Perin said. “And all these well-educated people– from Chile, Eritrea, Northern Sudan, Pakistan, and more–are telling us about their countries. It’s just amazing what they can contribute to class.” One week her lesson included readings on race issues, and the students wrote their memories from childhood and how their perspective as adults has changed. She says her knowledge and understanding of the world has grown, as has that of her 10 students. “They’re interested in what they learn from each other. And the program director tells me they so appreciate the class and what I do.”

Recently, Perin took the class on a field trip.to the food pantry because she wanted the students to be able to see it in action and, perhaps, help out and interact with the clients. She also considered that it would make for a good writing assignment. “It worked out,” she said. An understatement, as in paper after paper she read how her students, immigrants all, were affected by their experience. Here’s how Arun, a young woman teacher from India summed up: “This trip I will never forget. I realized how fortunate we are. We should give thanks to God every day. We should give back something to our community.”

And for Perin, too, this new volunteer venture has “worked out.” She said, “This is just what one should be doing, taking faith seriously. After all these years of being a journalist, I believe there’s a need to pass along our understanding of the language and how to communicate.”

Let’s go

Sue Kessler-Schall remembers a “clear push from God” six years ago when she first thought about the improbable, but oh-so intriguing, prospect of starting up a fair trade business. It was her then-pastor at Galilee Lutheran Church, Pewaukee, Wis., the Rev. Joy McDonald-Coltvet, who delivered the push when she handed her a brochure about fair trade coffee, Equal Exchange from Lutheran World Relief, and asked her to start using and selling it at church.

“I’d never heard of fair trade,” Kessler-Schall admits, “but I’d been on my knees for three months, with the only thing on my heart being a way to do something with the poor.” At 54, the mother of four, aged five to 15, was looking for a different direction. Her 18-year-financial career was ending with the sale of the company she worked for. At that time her husband had lost his job. Still, with $135 required to set up a company and a computer in her basement, she started her business–Trails to Bridges–knowing “practically, it didn’t make any sense” but trusting that the opportunity was an answer to prayer.

She joined the Fair Trade Association and buys from suppliers that meet its standards. She also stocks items made by people in El Salvador and Tanzania, where she’s visited with church groups. “I’ve seen the people. I know they’re not using child labor,” she said.

For two years she ran the business from her home, filling on-line orders (trailstobridges.com) from inventory piling up through the house. She also traveled to farmers’ markets, church gatherings, corporate meetings, even hospital gift shops to sell. “Part of the joy is hearing people react when they see the work of another hand. To see that energy take off, it’s terrific, especially when you work alone a lot.”

Kessler-Schall now rents a store in Hartland, a Milwaukee outer-ring suburb where she lives. She plans to offer fund-raising shopping events, giving community groups a percentage of sales for their own use. “My goal is to drive people into the gallery,” she said...and to cut back on packing up to sell off site.

She doesn’t know yet if her business will make it financially in the long-run. “The last three years have been very challenging,” she said. “People can’t buy when they don’t have money.” She continues to work 20 hours a week as a community educator at the Women’s Center of Waukesha County.

And she continues to see good in the everyday happenings, like a letter from the sewing group in Peru that came with a recent shipment of their sock monkeys. The folks in Peru wrote they bought shoes with money from the previous order. “That’s where the joy comes for me,” she said. “I love what I do. I wake up every day and say, ‘Let’s go!’”

I’m getting there

More than 300 volunteers from a dozen suburban congregations worked at the first Christmas “store” of Bethel New Life, a Christian community organization in Chicago that grew out of Bethel Lutheran Church some 30 years ago. The unique store made it possible for some 500 parents living in poverty to select gifts for their children. It was a huge undertaking, hugely successful because of the generosity and participation of many people. But when asked which one volunteer really stood out, Bethel organizers quickly named Terri Murrin for her spirit, “powerful and joyful.”

But Murrin, 51, who suffers from persistent effects of a series of TIAs (mini-strokes), didn’t see herself that way when she read about the Bethel project in the newsletter of her church, Our Saviour’s Lutheran in Naperville, Ill. She and her husband decided to make Christmas 2010 giftless because the couple who lost jobs and their home in the previous two years simply had no money.

She signed up for the Bethel project and enlisted a cousin and friend, too. “When I worked, I always volunteered to make gift bags for the homeless,” Murrin said. “I didn’t want to feel sad, not contributing to the holiday.”

She worked the week before the sale, sorting children’s clothes and spent one sale day on the gift wrapping line. “The excitement showed in everybody’s face, as they picked out the paper and bows,” she said. “It was wonderful to hear their stories.”

When the Murrins moved from Wisconsin, Terri’s sister and brother-in-law invited them to Our Saviour’s. “Going to church is a newer thing for me,” Terri said. A workshop on anxiety taught her about change, she said, repeating its themes: “Changing what’s around you will change you. Making what’s around you better can make you better. Building happiness around yourself makes you happy. I’m getting there.”

A big goodness

Julie Jersild Roth created Nell Nielsen in 2006, and from the start the watercolor prodigy, about 8 years old, made friends around the country through the pages of the book Roth illustrated and wrote, Knitting Nell. The little girl makes scarves for family and friends, blankets for babies, socks and hats and mittens for the needy. Through Roth’s Good Scarf Project, she and Nell have taught other children the joy of knitting for others–even others you’ll never know. The good in every stitch comes from a thought, she explained, for a cause or organization, or for a person or group.

But Nell’s.and Roth’s.influence didn’t end there. Students at the school in Roth’s St. Paul, Minn., neighborhood have given “oodles” of scarves to a homeless and runaway teen shelter. A counselor at a Texas school calls Roth regularly to report on the capsfor- good project that has her students making knit hats for newborns in poor countries, needed to keep their body temperatures even.

“I don’t hear about it all,” Roth said. “But it’s a ‘big goodness.’ Once something starts getting in the airwaves, it just keeps building. People feel that and want to be doing something good, too.”

Roth, in her early 50s, first learned of knitting for others decades ago, growing up in First Lutheran Church, Janesville, Wis., as a natural part of handwork that her mother, grandmother, great aunts did. They all sewed, often together on Sundays after church. She recalls the woman-to-woman bond they forged, a common “heart space.”

That gave her joy as a girl, and it’s something of what she hopes happens in the knitting groups that Nell has inspired. The book, by the way, is in its second printing. Good that it’s making money for the publisher, Roth said. Better that Nell and her joyful story of knitting for others will keep being heard.

Joy in service

Different paths, but all walks that are ways of rejoicing. You’ve no doubt figured out there is no arriving at the end of these paths, no reaching a permanent place of joy. And we know how easy it is to stray and to find ourselves on a road that looks like it leads to riches. Or fame. Or even society’s vision of the good life.

Again, the Brussats offer words to help us be ever more a part of our communities, to commit to our hopes. They call it their “daily vow” and offer it at the beginning of each section—each main word— in Spiritual Rx. The vow is said silently as part of morning meditation. Read it. Again. And again: “Knowing how much pleasure there is in serving another’s happiness, I vow to make serving others one of the joys of my life.”

Could this be yours?

Kathy Kastilahn writes from her home in Evanston, Ill., where she is a member of St. Paul Lutheran Church.