A Kind Face
Joy is the greatest cleanser, and it is
the greatest testimony to our faith.
— St. Francis of Assissi, translated by Daniel Ladinsky in Love Poems from God, p. 34
Category: Joy
10 Posts
Shout With Joy
“Clap your hands, all you peoples; shout to God with loud songs of joy. For the Lord, the Most High, is awesome,” declares Psalm 47:1-2. Instead of hearing it as exaggerated, we need to take this advice to heart. We do need to be able to rejoice with God. We do need to be able to shout with joy. Many of us are far too emotionally guarded to actually be able to do so. We carry ourselves as though braced for the worst. We are ready to be good sports about God’s will for us, but we are not ready to really revel in the joy of what God is unfolding for us. We are prepared to accept the negative but not the positive. The positive sends us reeling. We feel out of our depth, but are we?
Perhaps, with a little help from God, we can become accustomed to God’s generosity. Perhaps we can become accustomed to God’s will and our will coinciding. It’s worth trying. We need to remain calm and centered as great good comes to us. We need to respond to life with a spirit of exuberance. We need to anticipate and accept the new opportunities that await us. We need to stay as close to God in times of joy as we do in times of sorrow. We need to pray with the words of Psalm 3:3, “You, O Lord, are a shield around me.”
Julia Cameron, Faith and Will, p. 154-155
Co-Creating
A creative God didn’t complete creation, I am convinced, so that we might have the happiness that comes with continuing to co-create it ourselves.
— Joan Chittister, Following the Path, p. 35
Not a Traffic Cop
Walking beside others is what we are here to do. That’s why others have gathered. But walking side by side is far different than pushing our specific direction on someone else. If our motive is to express joy about another’s journey, allowing her or him to have what fits for them, we are fulfilling God’s will for us. If, instead, we are directing traffic, we have usurped God’s role in their lives, and it’s time to back off.
— Karen Casey, Let Go Now, p. 77
Delighted
We make dreams real primarily because we’re delighted in some way.
— SARK, Glad No Matter What, p. 187
Our Own Music
If we cannot hear the music of our own sweet nature calling to us, if we cannot remember that the intention is to live who we really are, it’s hard to know how to move, where to begin, how to dance. That’s why it’s not always a good idea to start shouting enthusiastically about what we are going to do, how we are going to live our soul’s longing, no matter how strongly this longing is felt in the moment. Sometimes we need to just stand quietly together, hand in hand, until one of us hears the music and begins to dance.
— Oriah Mountain Dreamer, The Dance, p. 15
Antidote to Life’s Doldrums
My curiosity and love of learning have been sustained by the advice Merlin gave Arthur in T. H. White’s Once and Future King: “The best thing for being sad is to learn something. That’s the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn.” I can’t count the number of times I have conjured up Merlin’s advice, and it always proves true — learning is a wonderful antidote to life’s doldrums and it keeps me alive to the wonders of the world.
— Diane W. Frankenstein, Reading Together: Everything You Need to Know to Raise a Child Who Loves to Read, p. 2
Beauty for a Lifetime
It is a gift we humans have, to hold on to beauty felt in a moment for a lifetime. Suddenly beauty comes to us, and gratefully we take it. We may not be able to recite time and place, but the memories can come flooding back, felt full force without warning or brought on purposefully by a triggering event. The smell of pinecones, the whiff of popcorn, the taste of a cold beer, or the bite of mint: a jumble of feelings, and then a sudden clarity of beauty or joy or sadness. Beauty is in the moments that endure, the moments that enliven us again and again. We stand on memory’s sturdy pilings. We thrive on the nourishment provided by the past.
— Nina Sankovitch, Tolstoy and the Purple Chair, p. 42
Love Poems from God
I hope a few of these poems will reach in deep enough to cure what separates us from each other, and from the beautiful. I hope you fall into this wine barrel (this book) and crawl out legally drunk, and get arrested for doing something that makes God proud of you, like being too happy.
— Daniel Ladinsky, Love Poems from God, page xii
God’s Song
Why do we still hold back sometimes from being fully happy? Birds chirp, squirrels chase each other, otters swim and dive, dogs wag their tails, cats purr, monkeys joke, wolves cuddle, eagles soar the heights, and babies laugh about their toes. Joy is the bright Force of Creation that throbs through all of its creatures in different ways. Joy is God’s song, and it sings the flowers awake in springtime, calling out with conviction that there is no ultimate death, no winter that lasts. Joy is the Earth turning her her face toward the sun once again, and the frozen hard ground yielding and softening, like our hearts when they are given hope that they might heal and be happy after all. Joy coaxes the sap to rise, the trees to extend their branches into space, and the blossoms to burst slowly forth with color and fragrance to share their particular songs with whoever will come by. We are surrounded by a chorus of the sublime and the beautiful, and we need to let ourselves sing gaily in that grand chorus. Joy! Why not? It looks good on you.
— Mary Hayes Grieco, Unconditional Forgiveness, p. 21