I’ve heard folks say, “How can you be joyful when the world is such a mess?” And some days I too wonder how to be joyful.
But I believe that
Joy is Necessary
every day, even when things are falling apart—especially when things are falling apart.
Joy is as necessary as breathing.
Being grateful, spending time in nature, hugging my husband, seeking out and experiencing wonder, and making photographs (that’s my joy bringer, what’s yours?) are the greatest joy bringers I know.
In daily life, we must see that it is not happiness that makes us grateful. It is gratefulness that makes us happy.— Brother David Steindl-Rast
You may ask what has prompted this pondering about the necessity of joy today of all days.
Tulip petals falling, March 58th (see yesterday’s post), not feeling well, war in Ukraine, climate change warnings, growing violence in our nation, and the murder of a 10 year old girl in a small town in Wisconsin, who was simply riding her bike home after playing with friends. All of this feels heavy and sad, yet a little bit of gratitude, joy, or wonder balances the scales so that I can continue to notice everything, even the unbearably sad parts of life.
Joy is necessary. Loving the world just as it is, is as necessary as breath. Feeling it all, and allowing yourself to feel it all is necessary.
Any Common Desolation
can be enough to make you look up
at the yellowed leaves of the apple tree, the few
that survived the rains and frost, shot
with late afternoon sun. They glow a deep
orange-gold against a blue so sheer, a single bird
would rip it like silk. You may have to break
your heart, but it isn’t nothing
to know even one moment alive. The sound
of an oar in an oarlock or a ruminant
animal tearing grass. The smell of grated ginger.
The ruby neon of the liquor store sign.
Warm socks. You remember your mother,
her precision a ceremony, as she gathered
the white cotton, slipped it over your toes,
drew up the heel, turned the cuff. A breath
can uncoil as you walk across your own muddy yard,
the big dipper pouring night down over you, and everything
you dread, all you can’t bear, dissolves
and, like a needle slipped into your vein—
that sudden rush of the world.
— Ellen Bass, from How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope
…”it isn’t nothing to know one moment alive” my friends. It isn’t nothing.
May you walk in beauty.
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