The Gravity of Joy: A Story of Being Lost and Found

by Angela Williams Gorrell

Publisher:

Eerdmans

, 2021

Overview

“My vocation was supposed to be joy, and I was speaking at funerals.”

Shortly after being hired by Yale University to study joy, Angela Gorrell got word that a close family member had died by suicide. Less than a month later, she lost her father to a fatal opioid addiction and her nephew, only twenty-two years old, to sudden cardiac arrest. The theoretical joy she was researching at Yale suddenly felt shallow and distant—completely unattainable in the fog of grief she now found herself in.

But joy was closer at hand than it seemed. As she began volunteering at a women’s maximum-security prison, she met people who suffered extensively yet still showed a tremendous capacity for joy. Talking with these women, many of whom had struggled with addiction and suicidal thoughts themselves, she realized: “Joy doesn’t obliterate grief. . . . Instead, joy has a mysterious capacity to be felt alongside sorrow and even—sometimes most especially—in the midst of suffering.”

This is the story of Angela’s discovery of an authentic, grounded Christian joy. But even more, it is an invitation for others to seize upon this more resilient joy as a counteragent to the twenty-first-century epidemics of despair, addiction, and suicide—a call to action for communities that yearn to find joy and are willing to “walk together through the shadows” to find it.

Contents

• Foreword by Miroslav Volf
• Prologue
• Sheer Silence
• Hooked
• Too Late
• Unleashed
• Helpful Help
• The Search
• Bright Sorrow
• Stories to Tell
• Joy
• Epilogue

Praise for the Print Edition

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

For Angela this book is not about Angela, though stories of her experiences figure very prominently in it. It is about the great power of that rather ephemeral but irresistible emotion called joy, an emotion that we cannot manufacture but that we can prepare for and open ourselves toward. . . . That joy, Christ’s joy, is ‘an incredibly powerful counteragent to despair—and even a companion during suffering.’ In a way—a difficult, challenging way—each of the stories of addiction, despair, depression, and death Angela here tells is an invitation to that kind of joy.

—Miroslav Volf

Product Details

• Title: The Gravity of Joy: A Story of Being Lost and Found
• Author: Angela Williams Gorrell
• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Print Publication Date: 2021
• Logos Release Date: 2022
• Pages: 234
• Era: era:contemporary
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Reader Edition
• Subjects: Joy › Religious aspects--Christianity; Suffering › Religious aspects--Christianity; Despair › Religious aspects--Christianity; Suicide › Religious aspects--Christianity; Addicts › Religious life
• ISBNs: 9780802877949, 080287794X
• Resource ID: LLS:GRAVITYOFJOY
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-30T00:21:08Z

About Angela Williams Gorrell

Angela Williams (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is assistant professor of practical theology at George W. Truett Theological Seminary, Baylor University, in Waco, Texas. She previously served as associate research scholar for metrics and evaluation, field development, and public engagement at the Yale Center for Faith and Culture at Yale Divinity School, where she worked on the Theology of Joy and the Good Life project with Miroslav Volf. Gorrell researches, writes, leads workshops, trains, and consults regarding the relationship between new media culture, joy, and visions of the good life.