recent interview<\/a> about the book, Bowler describes the differences between happiness and joy, lamenting that as a culture, we often confuse happiness with mental health. By prioritising positive emotions, she says, we \u2018crowd all experiences onto one end of the emotional spectrum\u2019, unhelpfully pathologising healthy sadness. <\/p>\nThe feeling that it\u2019s never enough isn\u2019t a glitch in the system, it\u2019s part of the engine.<\/p>\n
While she has nothing against happiness\u2014welcoming those moments and seasons in her life with gratitude\u2014she says \u2018the idea that you can create a permanent state of happiness actually creates misery\u2019. This kind of \u2018toxic positivity\u2019 is \u2018almost guaranteed to make us sad\u2019, she believes, because it prevents us from honestly naming our emotions and experiences. She wants \u2018to allow us a minute for grief, for reality, for lament, for appropriate bitterness\u2019.<\/p>\n
For Bowler, the ache of living is \u2018a reminder that every beautiful thing is here in a minute and may be gone in the next; the fleeting nature of our lives will always make us hunger, and our hunger can either then be manipulated and distorted to force us to buy enormous water bottles and comfortable jumpsuits on Instagram, or we can remind ourselves that the feeling that it\u2019s never enough isn\u2019t a glitch in the system, it\u2019s part of the engine.\u2019<\/p>\n
Christians, St Augustine among them, have always suspected that the restless longing for more\u2014for a place in our \u2018Father\u2019s house\u2019, a home in the shimmering kingdom of peace that we glimpse at Easter and are called to commit ourselves to\u2014is intimately linked to our capacity for hope and even joy.<\/p>\n
Bibb\u2019s music\u2014at a particular moment of global uncertainty and sorrow\u2014managed to harness all the longing and heartache in the room and bring out of it a surprising and hopeful sense of community and joy.<\/p>\n
The cross remains the central emblem of the Gospel for a reason. The risen Christ, when he appears to his friends in his glory, still bears the scars of his passion. Real hope, Easter hope, is much more than just human optimism, more than stoically putting on a brave face or cheerfully denying that anything is wrong. Holy Week and Easter take us right into the terrifying heart of the storm and out the other side, not only marshalling its brutal force but transforming it into something unexpectedly inspiring and beautiful.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s hard to put my finger on what I experienced recently in St Kilda, but if I had to try, this would come close. It wasn\u2019t just the impressive skill of the musicians, the sensitivity of the songwriting or Bibb\u2019s warm, wry banter between songs. It was the way his music\u2014at a particular moment of global uncertainty and sorrow\u2014managed to harness all the longing and heartache in the room and bring out of it a surprising and hopeful sense of community and joy. <\/p>\n
Describing the musical heritage of African Americans at the turn of the 20th century, W E B Du Bois famously said that \u2018Through all the sorrow songs there breathes a hope.\u2019 <\/p>\n
What I was experiencing was Easter hope\u2014birthed in heartache, forged in the Blues.<\/p>\n
\u2018Needed Time\u2019 is one of those songs. Originally recorded in the 1950s by Blues singer Lightnin\u2019 Hopkins, it\u2019s a favourite of Bibb\u2019s and is rarely left out of his set. As the whole audience sang along to the chorus that night\u2014\u2018Now is the needed time, right now is the needed time \u2026 Jesus, won\u2019t you come by here?\u2019\u2014it dawned on me how much I had needed this unexpected moment. And what is the season of Easter, in the end, but just such a \u2018needed time\u2019?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I\u2019m certainly not the first to trace a line between the Psalms of Lament and the Blues. Both…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5486,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[6866,6864,6865,6310,6868,6869,260,6867,6870,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-5485","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-melbourne","8":"tag-archbishop","9":"tag-archdiocese","10":"tag-catholic","11":"tag-child-safety","12":"tag-community","13":"tag-jesus","14":"tag-melbourne","15":"tag-parish","16":"tag-sacraments","17":"tag-victoria"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5485"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5485\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}