To Make a Joyful Noise - Jan 15 2026

 

To Make A Joyful Noise

Jan 15 2026

There are still small breaks

of open water

where the current is swift

or the river drops. 

Black holes

and a furious sound 

that both seem out of place,

don’t belong

in the smoothly scoured whiteness

and plushy silence of snow.

Or really, just how wrong it seems

that liquid water even exists

in this ice-bound land,

water

from some inexhaustible source

even further north.

We talk of rivers as living things;

if not a spiritual belief 

then a handy metaphor.

But this insurgent sound

 — wild, determined, defiant —

does seem alive;

or at least a reminder

that even in the stillness of winter

the river lives,

flowing inexorably downstream

according to its destiny.

Is it human nature

to raise from the dead,

breathe life

into inanimate objects?

Do gods lurk everywhere?

Even me, a self-proclaimed skeptic 

can’t help but feel uplifted

by the sound of moving water on a still winter day.

By those small breaks

in the pure monastic whiteness,

like apostates

renouncing their faith

and breaking vows of silence.

By these bottomless black pools

treacherously edged

with thin transparent ice,

rippling with light

and pulsing like blood

with every surge and ebb.

How rivers run.

How life finds a way.

And how we make a joyful noise

to celebrate.

As a fundamentalist atheist (I admit, I get a cheap thrill out of appropriating the term), I’m embarrassed to say that the expression referenced in both the title and conclusion is Biblical in origin. To crib from my AI’s research:  “The wording comes famously from Psalms, especially Psalm 100:1 ‘Make a joyful noise unto the LORD, all ye lands’ and Psalm 98:4 ‘Make a joyful noise unto the LORD, all the earth.’ These verses call all people to exuberant worship.”

I like the poetry of the term, but would prefer to think of it in more of a pantheistic sense:  an appreciation of creation, but without any belief in a creator.  

We are all pantheists, in a way, shamelessly anthropomorphizing:  children, as much in love with their plush toys as any living thing; environmentalists, who revere trees and see in them a living spirit; and even the superstitious, who name their cars and endow them with a personality.

And when you consider all the wildly improbable contingencies, bottlenecks, and near misses that led to both us and this living planet, a natural explanation for the universe is so much more awe-inspiring than some divine entity sitting on a cloud and calling it into existence with a simple wave of his hand.