Focus | from the Editor

 “Tidings of comfort and joy” the Christmas carol goes, and at first thought comfort and joy do seem to go together like peanut butter and jelly.

But not always. I remember as a child playing that carol on our baby grand while a dozen relatives stood around me singing exuberantly off key, embodiments of comfort and joy who made my heart soar. That same memory shades into one from Christmas morning, however, when my mother realized that she’d forgotten to buy a gift for my cousin, who sat forlorn until, at my mother’s urging, I gave up one of my own gifts to him, hastily rewrapped. I didn’t want to give it and it made me cringe, but that discomfort gave rise to joy when I saw his smile.

Several contributors to this Winter 2023-2024 issue of Parabola offer powerful tales of joy arising from discomfort. Musician Eric Krans, for example, offers an account of his shy, reluctant nephew asking a stranger for help and the boy’s joy when the man happily complies; and from independent scholar Giorgio Sol comes a startling consideration of the teaching (“The worst portents are joyfully accepted”) of little-known Indonesian Buddhist master Serlingpa.

The insight that joy can arise from discomfort like a lotus from mud is supported by another: that our lives, and the universe in which we live them, are meaningful and good, and that realization of this can bring comfort and joy in equal measure. Strong examples abound in these pages, from renowned teacher Ravi Ravindra’s memoir of meeting Krishnamurti to novelist Elizabeth Cunningham’s reminiscence of worshipping with the Quakers, to scientist Susan Bauer-Wu and H.H. The Dalai Lama together imagining a future that, as they put it, “we can love.” Also here are a meditation from Benedictine oblate Gilbert Friend-Jones on memento mori, and a fond remembrance by novelist Mary A. Osborne of the very special town where she grew up. There are meditations on Ralph Waldo Emerson and C.S. Lewis, a report by activist Trebbe Johnson on this year’s Parliament of World Religions, and—an annual event—the winning entries in this year’s Poetry of the Sacred contest. And much more.

May this issue bring you much comfort, and much joy.

—Jeff Zaleski