{"id":7362,"date":"2004-05-04T07:27:23","date_gmt":"2004-05-04T07:27:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2004\/05\/how_to_be_happy.html"},"modified":"2004-05-04T07:27:23","modified_gmt":"2004-05-04T07:27:23","slug":"how_to_be_happy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/05\/how_to_be_happy.html","title":{"rendered":"How to be Happy"},"content":{"rendered":"

In The Tablet, Robert Ellsberg writes about what he learned<\/a><\/p>\n

The saints do not teach us how to avoid suffering. Nor do they teach us that suffering makes us happy. What they do show is that it is only along the path of holiness that we can comprehend a type of happiness for which suffering is no necessary obstacle. Through figures ranging from St Ther\u00e8se, to Julian of Norwich, Teilhard de Chardin and Henri Nouwen, we learn that our attitude need not depend on outward circumstances. There is a meaning or truth at the heart of life which suffering is powerless to destroy. There is no place that is literally \u201cgodforsaken\u201d, but in every situation there is a door that leads to love, to fullness of life, to happiness. This is the deepest mystery of the Gospel. Our task, if we would learn from the saints, is to find that door and enter in. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In The Tablet, Robert Ellsberg writes about what he learned The saints do not teach us how to avoid suffering. Nor do they teach us that suffering makes us happy. What they do show is that it is only along the path of holiness that we can comprehend a type of happiness for which suffering…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nHow to be Happy - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/05\/how_to_be_happy.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How to be Happy - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In The Tablet, Robert Ellsberg writes about what he learned The saints do not teach us how to avoid suffering. Nor do they teach us that suffering makes us happy. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7362\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}