We were talking one day about something we read that mentioned “delight.” Bill commented, “We grown-ups just don’t ‘do’ delight as well as children.” We’ve been thinking about that since and want to share these reflections with you.

While children dance with delight, we grownups have learned to dampen our pleasures; smile, gently, instead of shout; nod our approval rather than clap for joy.

Churches, at least the ones I attend, are more apt to schedule solemn ceremonies than to encourage spontaneous celebration. Exuberance is frowned on. Delight, it seems, is somehow distasteful.

Have we forgotten how crowds once listened to Jesus “with delight” (Mark 12:37)? Do we remember that playful delight is characteristic of Divine Wisdom herself – “at play everywhere on [God’s] earth, delighting to be with the children of men” (Proverbs 8:31)?

The Psalms encourage us to “delight in the Lord” (37:4), and the very last psalm calls us to a festival of exuberant praise: “Praise him with tambourines and dancing…, with triumphant cymbals praise him” (150: 4-5).

Yet, in the eyes of many, Christianity – too often chanting its “thou shalt nots” – is the ultimate party-pooper. As one 19th-century poet put it, “Thou has conquered, O pale Galilean; the world has grown grey from thy breath.”

This year, I’d like to start “doing delight.” I’m not big on New Years resolutions, but this year I pray that I may take delight in each day I am given, in each grace and blessing I receive. And with the late Irish priest and poet, John O’Donohue, I offer each of you this blessing:

It’s hard to say the word delight silently in my mind without feeling a smile on my heart. I remember two occasions when delight was shared without even a word being spoken. The one that comes to mind most often is when I returned home in 1958 after being away at school in Mississippi. I was just a teenager, but when I stepped off the train, it was my mother who jumped up and down clapping her hands and giggling with pure delight like a little child. On the drive home, Mother and Daddy didn’t say much. The overwhelming delight said it all.

Several generations later, I noticed that same pure delight in the faces and giggles of children from babes in arms to toddlers. At our San Antonio Botanical Gardens Lightscape production, over a million lights drew delight – and awe – and wonder. One little toddler with very short legs was so enchanted, he ran so fast toward the lights that his mother could hardly catch him.

During this Christmas / Epiphany season, most liturgical readings referred to delight and light. The infant in Elizabeth’s womb leaped with delight at the news that Mary was to have a son, our Savior, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. (Luke 1:41-47 NABRE)

“Adults don’t do delight very well,” Bill said. When did we stop expressing delight? What is blocking our sense of pure delight?

How might I find delight in the lights? In things of beauty? In nature? In little Epiphanies?

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