Surprised by Joy

This morning I was reading an article by Zadie Smith in the current New Yorker that caught some of what I was saying yesterday about joy: "This is the effect that listening to Joni Mitchell has on me these days: uncontrollable tears.  An emotional overcoming , disconcertingly distant from happiness, more like joy--if joy is the recognition of an almost intolerable beauty.  It's not a very civilized emotion."
I think it was C.S. Lewis' book Surprised by Joy that first helped me to articulate this ache that is somehow wrapped up in joy.  He says what he means by joy in a passage that begins, "As I stood beside a flowering currant bush on a summer day there suddenly arose in me without warning, and as if from a depth not of years but of centuries, the memory of that earlier morning at the Old House when my brother had brought his toy garden into the nursery.  It is difficult to find words strong enough for the sensation which came over me; Milton's 'enormous bliss' of Eden comes somewhere near it."
Lewis says it is like a longing for a longing "an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction.  I call it Joy, which is here a technical term and must be sharply distinguished both from Happiness and Pleasure....anyone who has experienced it will want it again...I doubt whether anyone who has tasted it would ever, if both were in his power, exchange it for all the pleasures in the world."
The Joy we celebrate this "Be Joyful Sunday" is a surprise that springs from a sudden realization of God's presence in us or in this sunset moment or in some overwhelming kindness from a friend.