That phrase has repeatedly elbowed aside many others in my memories of a thoroughly joyful jazz performance in Brattleboro, Vermont last May. Ednea Owens is an under-40 stand-up bass player who has the presence to lead a stage full of Julliard-trained musicians in a performance that managed to be both disciplined and unrestrained.

The keyboard player, beneath a tangled nest of dreadlocks, wore a perpetual, delighted smile while listening to others or creating his own variations which ranged from hard-driving to reflectively lyrical. At different times, each of the seven performers lit up with that same smile, illuminating joyful immersion in their own creations, and those of others.

Late in the show, Owens thanked her mother, God, and some of the musicians who inspired and taught her during her musical journey. In thanking her band (The Cookout), she announced, “We practice joy as an act of resistance,” and something hummed in my chest like a phantom tuning fork.

I learned that the phrase is the title of a 2008 poem written by Toi Derricotte, ostensibly as an elegy to her pet fish, Telly. She asks “Why would a black woman need a fish to love? … What does her love have to do with five hundred years of sorrow, then joy coming up like a small breath, a bubble? What does it have to do with the graveyards of the Atlantic, in her mother’s heart?” Everyone interprets poetry through a unique lens, but I believe the answers to her questions are in the poem’s title, whether the resistance is to a historical bias still alive in many American interactions, or to a world where solace and unconditional love are often the sole province of pets.

In occupying a mental and political space regularly under attack over the last 50 years, I’ve often found myself and others with similar beliefs to be too dour and serious, frowning on a beautiful sunny day, or turning away from sensual, mental, and spiritual pleasures because there are too many important, serious things on our minds. As I was often reminded during childhood, “There are children starving in China,” and today, starving and bombed in Gaza, and Ukraine, and abandoned across Africa.

But this grim march down a narrow path was nudged aside when I saw a 1970s interview with Black Panther Bobby Seale from an Oakland jail cell. No matter how you feel about the Panthers’ legacy, methods, or inability to advance generally admirable goals (e.g., free breakfast and solid education for children in poor areas, community policing), you couldn’t fault their dedication to social change, since it became a life-and-death issue for many of them. In the documentary, Seale describes a few favorite dishes he loved to cook, carefully describing his methods (“you put the tomatoes on top of the rice then cover it so the tomato cooks down through”) and obviously relishing memories of his own home-cooked meals. It was a moment of joy from an iron cage.

As detailed by writer and speaker Lorraine Lam, joy can provide “the energy for change.” It’s “an invitation to resist the status quo, and lean into the pursuit of justice” in a society where justice is faltering in the face of government retribution and the violation of basic constitutional rights.

A year ago, I watched another documentary, this one from the center of the Ukraine conflict. “The Porcelain War” was made by three artists forced to react to attacks killing and wounding thousands of friends, family, and fellow Ukrainians. The recurring theme is the delicate porcelain art created by Slava and painted vibrantly by his partner Anya. They relieve the stresses of daily life in a war zone by continuing to produce fanciful figures which bring smiles from soldiers with faces blackened for night raids as well as neighbors just trying to survive.

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Late in the movie, Anya observes that “it’s easy to make people afraid” with bombs, drones, and missiles, but “even in war, there must be life. Art sustains us and helps us survive.” It provides a bit of joy in the midst of chaos and destruction.

Lam encourages us to find joy not just in exceptional art, but in the “ordinary” (e.g., gardening, playing sports, cooking a meal) and the “unexpected” (someone’s random act of kindness, discovering a hidden talent in a friend, a ray of sunlight penetrating the clouds). Each moment refreshes and renews us so that we’re better able to fight the battle for America’s soul.

Allen Woods is a freelance writer, author of the Revolutionary-era historical fiction novel “The Sword and Scabbard,” and Greenfield resident. His column appears regularly on a Saturday. Comments are welcome here or at awoods2846@gmail.com.