Angela Williams Gorrell - The Gravity of Joy: A Story of Being Lost and Found

Angela has a gift for clearly articulating deep, complicated emotions in a way that few writers can. I admire both her gut-level honesty and her thorough reflection. Her poignant storytelling gives readers permission to embrace the messiness of life and reinvigorates our hope in Gods presence through it all.

Linda Livingstone

president of Baylor University

Angela Gorrells moving personal experiences and stories in The Gravity of Joy arise amidst the ordinary, exceptional, and anguishing realities of being human. She is a vulnerable and honest guide, who knows her own and others tear-stained cheeks, as she and others receive joy with wonder, not triumph; with humility, not presumption; with presence, not power. This book is a witness to hope that can and does save lives.

Mark Labberton

president of Fuller Theological Seminary

Angela Gorrell was part of a Yale Divinity School project on a theology of joy when three members of her family died within four weeks, all in tragic situations. Drowning in an ocean of sorrow, she wondered if joy could keep her afloat. This remarkable book is her honest, vulnerable, and healing answer to that question. There is no spiritual cheerleading here, no cheap grace. Instead, there is the hard-won knowledge that, while we cannot make joy, we can open ourselves to the God who suffers with us, offering us witness and withness. The night is long, but if we keep on opening and offering ourselves through our tears, joy will come in the morning.

Parker J. Palmer

author of On the Brink of Everything, A Hidden Wholeness, and Let Your Life Speak

What is the true life? That is the big question that animates this book. Angela Gorrell teaches us that in a well-lived life emotions are felt authentically, choices are embraced meaningfully, and self-transcending connections are forged broadly. These pages crackle with raw honesty, deep wisdom, profound realizations, and potent reminders that ultimately goodness can be found amidst the rancor of daily life. The authors insights contained within are not ivory tower speculations, either. They were formed and forged through the crucible of living. Suffering is inevitable and inescapable but does not have to have the final say in our lives. Joy is a gift and will always find us, writes Gorrell. You will find joy in these pagesmay we all be grateful for this deeply moving gift she has given us.

Robert Emmons

author of The Psychology of Ultimate Concerns and The Little Book of Gratitude

The Gravity of Joy is a story of hope in hard times. Angela Gorrell artfully tells her story of faith, pain, and joy. She weaves it with the stories of othersfamily, women she met in prison Bible study, students, travelers she met on her journey. And she shares a truth that perhaps is discovered only by those who have faced love and lossespecially those society has used and abused, denied dignity to in life and death: that joy comes in the mourning. I encourage all who hunger for justice, peace, acceptance, and comfort to read this book. In its pages you will find beautiful prose and hope that even in the darkest of spaces, places, and timesthrough addiction, suicide, sudden death, prison, abuse, and despairlove reigns, truth reigns, joy reigns.

Liz Theoharis

co-chair of the Poor Peoples Campaign: A Call for National Revival

The Gravity of Joy is a unique exercise in vulnerable theology. Weaving memoir and journalism, theology and testimony, Gorrell invites us into the unthinkable to discover the possibility of a joy that surpasses understanding. Written with eyes wide open, this book is a reminder that the cracks in a broken heart can be openings for grace.

James K. A. Smith

author of You Are What You Love and On the Road with Saint Augustine

In The Gravity of Joy Angela Gorrell courageously narrates her personal experience of clawing her way through the valley of the shadow of death and despair, yearning for hope yet questioning whether joy can possibly exist in a world where suicide and opioid addiction steal lives away. When she begins to lead a Bible study with incarcerated women, she finds unexpected balm for her own despair, leading her to affirm: By grappling with suffering we actually come to a clearer understanding of joy. Gods primary response to suffering is withness and witnessthe visible manifestation of Gods presence in the midst of suffering.

Joyce Ann Mercer

Horace Bushnell Professor of Christian Nurture at Yale Divinity School

Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

4035 Park East Court SE, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49546

www.eerdmans.com

2021 Angela Williams Gorrell

All rights reserved

Published 2021

Printed in the United States of America

27 26 25 24 23 22 21 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

ISBN 978-0-8028-7794-9

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Gorrell, Angela, 1982 author.

Title: The gravity of joy : a story of being lost and found / Angela Williams Gorrell.

Description: Grand Rapids, Michigan : William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references. | Summary: An extended reflection on finding authentic Christian joy in the midst of suffering and despair, especially the twenty-first-century epidemics of suicide and addictionProvided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020040447 | ISBN 9780802877949

Subjects: LCSH: JoyReligious aspectsChristianity. | SufferingReligious aspectsChristianity. | DespairReligious aspectsChristianity. | SuicideReligious aspectsChristianity. | AddictsReligious life

Classification: LCC BV4647.J68 G67 2021 | DDC 248.8/6dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020040447

For Dustin, Mason, and Dad,

we miss you terribly.

Life is not the same without you.

For the women in the prison Bible study group,

may the joy you brought me be yours, too.

In this book youll read stories of Angela Williams Gorrells pain and joy during the three years she worked for the Yale Center for Faith & Culture and co-taught the Life Worth Living course at Yale University. You will learn of the pain of her own loss and the pain she bore on behalf of others, as well as of the joy that came to her and the joy that she elicited in others. You will learn much about the impact of people on her. But what you wont get from the book, and what you need to know while reading it, is the magnitude of the impact shes had on people around her, most notably her students.

I could never do what Angela does. I could never be the kind of teacher she is. She has chosen to close this book by mentioning her final lecture to the Life Worth Living class, delivered at the end of her time at Yale. She sums up what she told students she hoped they would take with them from her teaching. But she doesnt tell what happened immediately after that lecture, how her students, full of joy, gathered around her. To say that she was a star to them would be to say too little and, perhaps, to wrongly place emphasis on her success as a teacher. Instead, it seemed that she became a kind of flesh-and-blood angel to them, an unusual messenger, struggling with pain and, in openness about the struggle, bearing witness to lifes new possibilities. As one of the co-teachers of the course, I was in the room when she gave that lecture. I had taught Life Worth Living four times prior to that. In fact, together with Ryan McAnnally-Linz, I had originally designed the course. Its a popular class, and I have always sensed students appreciation for and excitement about it. But they never surrounded me on the last day of class as they surrounded Angela, moved by affection for her and beckoned by the world that she opened up for them. Much of their devotion to her had to do with how she herself dealt with the pain she experienced and with the path to joy she found in it.