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
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
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
If we could get a little perspective, we’d see how absurd it is to hold, on the one hand, that the Gospels are the definitive word on Jesus, while holding, on the other, that he doesn’t behave like that anymore. God gives us his Son, and grounds the record for all time in the four Gospels. This is who Jesus is. Against all other claims, doctrines, accounts, this is Jesus Christ. But then — as many Christians have been led to believe — God changed the rules. “That’s not available to you now.” You can’t reach out to him in faith as did the woman with the issue of blood and be healed by his life as she was. You can’t cry out to him and have him deliver you of a foul spirit. You can’t lean upon his breast in intimacy.
It’s psychotic.
It’s also blasphemy. He is the same, yesterday, today, and forever.
Let’s be honest. What is usually going on — what has proven true in every case I have ever encountered — is something more like this: “I don’t experience Jesus personally, so we must not as a rule be able to experience him personally.” Or, “I don’t experience Jesus like that (his playfulness, generosity, freedom, intimacy), so he mustn’t do that any more.”
— John Eldredge, Beautiful Outlaw, p. 156-157
There is another dimension to the violent, demanding God, the one people need Jesus to rescue them from. We see it in the words of the older brother, when he says he “never even disobeyed.” You can sense the anxiety in his defense, the paranoid awareness that he believed his father was looking over his shoulder the whole time, waiting and watching to catch him in disobedience. The violent God creates profound worry in people. Tension. Stress. This God is supposed to bring peace, that’s how the pitch goes, but in the end this God can easily produce followers who are paralyzed and catatonic, full of fear. Whatever you do, don’t step out of line or give this God any reason to be displeased, because who knows what will be unleashed.
Jesus frees us from that,
because his kind of love simply does away with fear.
Once again, the words of the father in the story,
the one who joyously, generously declares:
“You are always with me,
and everything I have is yours.”
— Rob Bell, Love Wins, p. 184
The Elegance of the Hedgehog reminded me, bone and blood, heart and soul, of Anne-Marie. It was as if I could hear her saying to me, “Yes, Nina, life is hard, unfair, painful. But life is also guaranteed — one hundred percent, no doubt, no question — to offer unexpected and sudden moments of beauty, joy, love, acceptance, euphoria.” The good stuff. It is our ability to recognize and then hold on to the moments of good stuff that allows us to survive, even thrive. And when we can share the beauty, hope is restored.
People often talk about the importance of living in the here and now, and express envy at how children enjoy their moments of pleasure without dwelling on the past or worrying about the future. Fine, agreed. But it is experience — a life lived — that allows us to recall moments of happiness and feel happy again. It is our ability to relive a moment that gives us strength. Our survival as a species is linked to this ability to remember (which berries not to eat; to stay away from the big toothy animals; to huddle close to the fire but not touch it). But survival of our inner selves also depends upon memories. Why else do we have such acute noses? I smell an evergreen and swoon with delight. Why? Because of the many pleasant hours passed at the foot of a Christmas tree. And the smell of popcorn is so seductive because of the movies I’ve enjoyed while eating it. The taste of a good green olive makes me hungry, because an olive or two have accompanied so many delicious meals and flowing wines.
— Nina Sankovitch, Tolstoy and the Purple Chair, p. 35
If I want to live my ability to be fully present and compassionate, my ability to be with it all — the joy and the sorrow — I must find the ways, the people, the places, the practices that support me in being all I truly am. I must cultivate ways of being that let me feel the warmth of encouragement against my heart when it is weary. I must be fiercely and compassionately honest with myself about those choices and actions that are inconsistent with my deepest nature and soul’s desires. I must find the song lines that run through my life, the melodies that remind me of what I really am and call me gently back to acting on this knowing. I must learn how to dance.
— Oriah Mountain Dreamer, The Dance, p. 13
That’s His song! I rejoice in you. Come rejoice in Me. The song that plays the world awake, the song that fuels joy: Enjoy Me. Enjoy Me!
Is there a greater way to love the Giver than to delight wildly in His gifts?
— Anne Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts, p. 218-219
The opposite of old is not young.
The opposite of old is new.
As long as we continue to experience the new,
we will gloriously inhabit all of the ages that we are.
— SARK, Glad No Matter What, p. 177
Coming to appreciate that we are not powerless over what we nurture in our minds, that we are, in fact, in charge of our thoughts, gives us the hope and the promise that we can feel however we want to feel. We can be as happy, as hopeful, or as miserable as we want to be. No thought can hold us hostage. No feeling can hold us hostage. No person can hold us hostage. We are as free as we want to be. This gives us all the ammunition we will ever need to know that all is well. Always, all is well.
— Karen Casey, Let Go Now, p. 60