Episode 07 - Joy for All People

We kick off this episode by naming our favorite Christmas songs: Lori kicks it old school with Chris Tomlin, Lindsy shines new light on The Little Drummer Boy, and Shannon hops down a rabbit trail on why Catholics wait so long to decorate their trees!

The conversation turns serious as we mull over the ways "joy" differs from "happiness" or "peace". We talk about the possibility of one without the other, and discuss whether circumstances can or should rob us of joy.

“There are Christians whose lives seem like Lent without Easter… of course joy is not expressed the same way at all times in life… {it} adapts and changes, but it always endures, even as a flicker of light born of our personal certainty that, when everything is said and done, we are infinitely loved.”  - Pope Francis, The Joy of the Gospel

In true Upside Down style, we can't let a single podcast go by without talking about the marginalized and social justice. The issue of great joy for all people comes up and we mull together over the implications of that, and what our role in that is.

Shannon confesses a sin of wanting to deny others their joy, and we all agree that jealousy can all too often cause us to resent the joy of our neighbor. Kayla hits the point home with a quote by Jürgen Moltmann:

“Sometimes it seems to me that compassion with the suffering of others is easier than the compassion with the joy of others. We feel so good if we can have mercy with somebody else, and we feel some envy if somebody else feels joy and success.”

We wrap up the show by comparing the different ways we each navigate gifts for our kids at Christmastime, and are unsurprised to find that we each have slightly different approaches. Lindsy's family is doing Legoland instead of gifts this year but shhhh, don't tell her kids!
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Grace and peace from Iowa (brrrrr!),
​Shannon