(RNS) — Kate Bowler spent the past decade bashing the American cult of positivity and the pursuit of optimal happiness.
Her experience battling stage 4 colon cancer in her 30s taught her the fallacy of such thinking.
Where her earlier books pondered mortality and grief, Bowler’s latest book is, of all things, about joy. Perhaps ironically, Bowler has found that skirting death pushed her to also consider opening herself up to experiencing joy. RNS invited Kate Bowler, who teaches American religious history at Duke Divinity School, to talk about her new book, “Joyful, Anyway.”
Yonat Shimron: Kate, thank you so much for coming to talk to us.
Kate Bowler: I always love talking to you.
When did it dawn on you, even in the midst of your pain, and maybe because of it, that joy can sometimes make an appearance?
I think mostly when I realized I’d had an experience of it that felt almost embarrassing to talk about, because joy is weirder than I think I realized. I had that stretch right after I was diagnosed with cancer. It was just a time of undoing. Everything that mattered was slipping away from me so quickly, and I was very angry, and I was heartbroken, and I just had this one strange little stretch where I felt bubblewrapped in love, love from …