The Path to Joy: Life Is a Riddle, and the Answer Is Joy

By Joseph B. Lynch

All people are seeking happiness. Joy is the deepest dimension of happiness. In our twentieth century world it is not easy to find “The Way.” Much of the modern search involves confusion, trial and error, wandering, and many hard lessons and disillusionment. Joe Lynch has been on this journey his whole life and has been a guide for many useful others. He has sought wisdom and has had many excellent guides along the way and shares them with his readers. G.K.Chesterton, C.S.Lewis, Martin Buber, Abraham Heschel, Socrates, Karl Jaspers, Josef Pieper, Huston Smith, Hans von Balthasar are offered as useful guides and models. His chapter on Jesus describes the New Testament understanding of the journey to joy. He finds Jesus’ words: “I have come that you may have life and have it abundantly”, (Jn 10:10) a promise kept. Jesus is the “singular human being.” This is a very comprehensive book that will in-spire you to undertake and continue your journey to joy. It is a mixture of autobiography, Scripture, Theology and the stories of archetypal modern writers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Mar 17, 2021
• ISBN: 9781664227064

Joseph B. Lynch

Joseph Lynch has spent his early professional life as a teacher of Religion, Counselor, and Director of Guidance in Catholic High Schools. His recent years have been spent with adults seeking to grow in understanding of their faith. He has been a teacher, mentor, counselor, and has developed programs for ongoing leadership training in the Church. He holds Masters Degrees in Religious Education and in Human Resource Development. He is the author of Reaching Out, how to communicate Gospel, hope and love to twentieth century Catholics, and of Food for the Journey, what I have learned along the way. He has also made a video presentation on “Leading Faith Sharing Groups”, produced by Paulist Press.

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Copyright © 2021 Joseph B. Lynch.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

WestBow Press

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Scripture quotes are from The Jerusalem Bible © 1966 by Darton Longman & Todd Ltd and Doubleday and Company Ltd.

ISBN: 978-1-6642-2705-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6642-2704-0 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6642-2706-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021904841

WestBow Press rev. date: 3/17/2021

CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction

Part 1: About Joy

Chapter 1 Life Is a Riddle

Chapter 2 The World as a Factory

Chapter 3 Wonder—My Early Memories

Chapter 4 Gilbert Keith Chesterton’s Early Life

Chapter 5 The Trajectory of Joy According to Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Chapter 6 Martin Buber, Abraham Heschel, Maurice Friedman

Chapter 7 Understanding New Testament Joy

Chapter 8 Socrates

Chapter 9 Karl Jaspers—A Modern Socrates

Chapter 10 Jesus

Chapter 11 On Holding on to Joy—Psychological Learnings

Part 2: Tradition

Chapter 12 Our Experience of Tradition

Chapter 13 Josef Pieper on Tradition

Chapter 14 Huston Smith’s Distinction between Cumulative and Noncumulative Truth

Chapter 15 G. K. Chesterton—The Man with the

Golden Key

Afterword

Fragments

To the Holy Spirit, who has given me enlightenment and energized me in my latter years.

To Anne, who is always sensitive and loving to me. I could not have met her and not been astonished. It has been a pure gift from the Spirit of God. I give thanks to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and to our Mother Mary for her being.

Most people are wandering in the wilderness of what is not because they haven’t found the path of what is.

—Parmenides

This time, like all times is a good one, if we know what to do with it.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

The pleasure of becoming an educated person is the enormous interest it adds to life.

—Edith Hamilton

PREFACE

I am an eighty-seven-year-old man who has been a teacher in some form for all my adult life. I am an only child, an introvert, an intuitive, and what sociologists call a seeker. I have an inborn call to help others to grow into the maturity of their being. I am naturally drawn to see the potential in people. I began as a high school teacher in a Catholic high school in 1953. After twenty-five years of teaching world history, english, religion, and introductory courses in both philosophy and psychology, I was asked by church leadership to do work as a conflict mediator and consultant to parish staffs and diocesan agencies. I had been a counselor as well and have done advanced study in listening skills, confrontation, problem-solving, and managing conflict. I also completed a four-year seminary curriculum and a master’s degree in religious education and human resources. As you see from all this, humanities has interested me quite a bit.

Research on seekers tells us that about 15 percent of people fall into that group. I am also somewhat skeptical of conventional ways of thinking and am a rebel against anything inhuman in the established order. In my midlife, I even resigned from my job as guidance director after a disagreement with a new principal when she established excessively harsh discipline policies that disproportionately affected students who came to us with a difficult family history. In my role as guidance director, I thought we could handle these situations with more discretion. As a lifelong high school person, I am far from a bleeding heart. I value enlightened structures, but I don’t want to be part of an administration that won’t try to understand circumstances and be inclined to be kind. I realized then that Jesus’s story of the Good Shepherd was my guiding light and educational model. Reality is complex (one of my favorite words), and you have to be both head and heart to manage and help adolescents. I am also a big believer in the hidden; so much of everything is not manifest. You might have to wait, listen and explore. I am a big fan of the German philosopher Karl Jaspers, who would have us believe in the endlessness of everything.

The 1950s, when I began teaching, was a somewhat settled time in white America; some have even said it was boring. In the mid-1960s, the local drug coordinator said to me, People in this town think that 1953 was the best year in history. The sixties were notably different. I left the United States in 1960 for seminary in Switzerland. I returned to the same high school in 1964 and experienced the tumult of those years to follow. It was culture shock to me. High school seniors were much more questioning and rebellious than in the fifties. I liked it. I remember a senior coming to me after class and saying, I hate this course. You never give any answers. I felt like Socrates in the agora. I had a lot of good answers but wasn’t going to tell this band of rebels. I even created a course in modern philosophy using William Barrett’s fine book The Irrational Man. Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy had been assassinated. Racial riots broke out in major cities. Vietnam War protests were widespread.

A few years later, at another school in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, protesting students were fired on at Kent State University. Most of the students in that school were from middle-class, blue-collar families that were law-abiding and conventional. Kent State was a step too far for them. They came to school but refused to enter the building. They were protesting. I was surprised but thought, Good. As chaplain, I stepped in and asked the principal to let me conduct a speak up assembly in the gym. It proved to be an excellent moment to let them say what was in their hearts and on their minds and to begin to process events.

I haven’t loved much of what I have seen in teenage culture for the last fifty years. Consumerism and conformity, technology and advertising have become dominant, and we have become less thoughtful and less imaginative, with very little memory. We are out of touch with the deeper dimensions of our lives unless pain intervenes. Me, now has become the mantra for the dominant culture. Until recently, I had very little hope for a turnaround. Much of contemporary culture is wandering in the wasteland. I Remember a sociology class with Ernest van den Haag, who spoke of three kinds of culture: folk culture, high culture, and mass culture. The folk culture of primitive and poorer people preserved ancestral truth well. High culture was appreciated by the educated. It comprised all the best that is known and thought in the world (Matthew Arnold’s description of those who know the classics). Mass culture is created out of the popular fads and fashions popular in the contemporary, other-directed society. I like to describe it as doing what everybody else is doing because everybody else is doing it. Contemporary media brainwashing accounts for much of our thinking. I admire many people old and young who have their truth because they inherited it in the goodness and wisdom of their families. The only other alternative seems to be broadly well educated with personal critical skills to judge the culture and find the way by one’s inner resources.

I am an idealist. I think it is important to have a vision and hope for our young people; the mind and the heart need development. Knowledge, understanding, and wisdom can lead us to truth and kindness. To seek the truth and to love goodness in all things seems to describe it well. The great Western philosophers Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle moved to this understanding of life. Thomas Aquinas, the great Christian theologian of the thirteenth century, speaks of it as being a radiant life. Attaining the life of such harmony and rhythm and sharing with others is in our very nature. The sad alternative is described by Henry James, an American novelist: For the small fry of the future there is such a thing in the United States as the freedom to grow up blighted and may be the only freedom in store.

All of the world’s great religious traditions speak of being a way or a path to some glory that could possibly await us. Of course, we know so well that there are so many pitfalls and casualties along the way.

Josef Pieper, one of my favorite Thomistic philosophers, asks Christians in a meditation for Pentecost, What is to be celebrated at Pentecost on the feast of the Spirit? He tells us that the ancients understood the Spirit as the power to come into contact with the totality of the world. What distinguishes a spiritual being is that the sphere in which it lives is that of reality as a whole. The life of the Spirit amounts therefore, to existing face-to-face with the world as a whole … not just the totality of diverse things, but the overall meaning, the essential foundation of all that is. It’s not just being in touch with specific goals like making a living or having fun. Technical achievements are only means. We understand our meaning in literature, the arts, philosophy, and religion, where the story of meaning is told.

Jesus will be so bold as to say, I am the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6). Buddha will speak of the eightfold path. The way of the Torah is the heart of Judaism. Martin Buber will write of the way of Hasid. In China, the Tao is to be your guide. This morning, I read The Great Philosophers by Karl Jaspers, and Jaspers asks, Did Plato show the way? Does he still show the way? The essence of his communication is to make humans aware of the necessity of finding the way and to give them the strength to search for it. The way itself is not manifested. For a very long time, I have described myself as a pathfinder. I needed to find the way to wisdom for myself. I hoped that those I met in life would discover their uniqueness and gifts, their inward light, and their blessings for the world. Too idealistic? I don’t think so. This sense has always fostered hope and enthusiasm in me. I never wanted to underestimate anyone or lose hope in anyone. I have even seen a few miraculous rebirths.

This book is my small attempt to help seekers, and those who might not yet be seeking, to believe there is a way, a path to be more truly yourself. Any frustration I have with American culture arises from seeing how it impoverishes us and diminishes us. So much boredom, depression, addiction, suicide, and ever new neuroses flow from an inadequate fulfillment of the true unique self given to each of us. We live in an image culture where impression management is sold to us all day long. Looking good and being cool abound and overwhelm us. Our culture lacks adequate remembering and active imagination about our personal lives and our nation’s possibilities. Our intellect grows weak from lack of use, and our desires run the risk of being too small. In the words of T. S. Eliot, we are distracted from distraction by distraction. Finding the true self is the most important task for every