GLAD TIDINGS

When something especially good happens in the course of the day, I am almost beside myself with the excitement of wanting to tell it to someone.  Usually I will call Maureen immediately.  If she’s not available I go down the list of other people that I want to tell.  I feel so bad for people who don’t have intimate companions who can become co-celebrators when good news comes, because it’s almost as if a good thing isn’t quite fully real until you get to share it with someone else who will get as excited about it as you are.  One of the main reasons that I so miss my mother is that she was high on my list of “people to tell things to.”  Now, when there is good news I still almost reflexively start to dial her number, knowing how much she will want to hear it—how much I will love telling her—how I will hear the excitement in her voice.  Alas, now only in my imagination.

The day that my book was accepted by a publisher, I was almost bursting with it.  I ran to tell Maureen. We planned a celebratory dinner for that night.  I called my mother. And then I decided to tell others in my life more casually, over time, sort of parceling out the preening pleasure that I would feel in breaking my news to them.  I would get a little joy in telling someone tomorrow and then save some more of that joy for the next day and the next.  But when my daughter was born, that was a whole different level of joy.  I couldn’t hold it in for even an hour.  I called every person I knew that very day and even broke the news to strangers in the hospital hallway and then in the street.

What we discover is that the telling of good news is more joyful even than receiving it.  When I occasionally buy a lottery ticket and pay that dollar for the opportunity to fantasize about great wealth for a few minutes or so, my most pleasurable fantasies are not about spending the money or changing my life—they are about telling Maureen and telling the others that I would want to give big chunks of money to.  I think about the myriad ways in which I might break the news creatively and imagine their reaction.  That’s the fantasy that warms my heart.  Giving the gift of joy to others may be the greatest pleasure life has to offer.

Isaiah speaks of bringing good news to the poor, or “glad tidings” as the ancient phrase so beautifully has it.  For him, the Messiah is the bearer of such tidings.  The glad tidings are that God is not off in some heaven but right here among us.  The good news is that no one is really poor because the most important wealth is within and around each one of us, and the poorer we are, the more likely we are to discover it.  The glad tidings are that every life is shot through with grace and holiness; that every moment reeks of eternity; that every least creature bears the spirit of God; that this whole world is alive with blessings. 

Those are the glad tidings that God’s anointed one brings, and every day brings again.  And we are now blessed to be the bearers of such good news.  We should be bursting to tell people.  We should be climbing that steeple to shout it out to passers-by.  We should be pealing the bell around the clock to alert everyone to this extraordinary thing.  We should be on our little cell phones to every loved one saying, “Have you heard it yet?”  “Have you found it out?”  God is all around you and in you and under you and over you and your house is holy and your children are sacred and your backyard is a paradise and your dog is a holy dog.  Because the real treasure of life, the purpose, the blessing, the joy and meaning, is right here within you.  And, my God, we are so lucky and so graced and so blessed. 

There is good news.  There are glad tidings.  Find your own way to feel the joy—but feel it indeed. And then, in your own way, burst out and share it, because sharing those glad tidings is the greatest pleasure life has to offer.