Embracing the fellowship of the broken

I was reading yesterday that a University of Chicago survey recently found only 14% of Americans report they currently feel "very happy." The General Social Survey has asked that same question every year since 1972 on their own survey. The lowest percentage of "very happy" people they've ever found is 29%.

I don't suppose you're any more surprised by that number than me. We have a lot going on. There are endless reasons for people to be struggling these days.

I've come to believe lately that the biggest consequence of our own unhappiness is it often blinds us to the unhappiness of others. And if you believe what I believe, that our greatest joy comes from helping others, well, I think we are falling deeper and deeper into an unhappy spin cycle, and I'm not sure how to reverse that.

Henri Nouwen says that compassion is hard work. He says:

"Compassion is hard because it requires the inner disposition to go with others to the place where they are weak, vulnerable, lonely, and broken. But this is not our spontaneous response to suffering. What we desire most is to do away with suffering by fleeing from it or finding a quick cure for it."

I don't need much science to believe that one. I have spent a great deal of my life running from my own suffering, and God knows I've sure experimented with plenty of quick cures for it. I suppose the greatest gift from that is I now know I can't outrun suffering, and I sure can't cure it.

I've also come to understand a lot of my suffering was based on a misguided idea of what it means to be "very happy."

When Jesus gave his Sermon on the Mount, he told us who was going to be happy. He gave us a list of who was going to be "blessed" - which in this sermon he used the Greek word for happy or blissful.

Here is who Jesus said would be happy:

The poor in spirit. Those who mourn. The meek. Those who hunger for what is right. The merciful. The pure in heart. The peacemakers. Those who are persecuted for doing what is right.

I read through that and Jesus is really saying happiness is about what we give to others and not about what life gives to us. I mean, Jesus spent every waking hour instinctively drawn to the broken and vulnerable and weak. Did he live that way to teach us how to be miserable, or "very happy?"

Nouwen would go on to say about compassion:

"Those who are not afraid to hold a hand in gratitude, to shed tears of grief, and to let a sigh of distress arise straight from the heart can break though paralyzing boundaries and witness the birth of new fellowship, the fellowship of the broken."

If anything describes Jesus, I think it is his willingness to break through paralyzing boundaries and witness the birth of new fellowship. Jesus was all about showing us our "very happy" is found in the fellowship of the broken.

I guess when we read that statistic - that only 14% of us are "very happy," we can read that as an opportunity to commiserate with so many others. Or, maybe, we can hear it as a call to break through some paralyzing boundaries. Maybe more than unhappy, people feel paralyzed.

Maybe they need the hand of someone who understands that they are broken. Maybe they need the hand of someone willing to say I am broken too.