JOYFUL PIECE #104
Looking For Joy In All The Right Places
At my wife’s suggestion I began to write on Joy once a week. At times, joy is something hard for me to pin down. Am I considering fleeting moments of happiness when something good happens? Or am I talking about something deeper and longer lasting in spite of adverse circumstances?
In the link included further down Richard Rohr quotes from Gal 5:22-23:
The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things.
In Richard Rohr’s meditation he points out how a connection to solitude and nature is necessary to recognize joy. It was easy for me to recognize joy before the debacle of the November 2024 Presidential Election. Now the environment fostered by fascists bring me the opposite of the above listed fruits of the Spirit.
So, I am tested daily to find the embers of my former joy and rekindle them to a flame daily. It is not always easy for me.
There are two key elements that the sages point to and help me to ground myself in joy. First, I must set aside some time for solitude each day. This allows the detritus in the glass of water that is my soul to settle out and yield some clarity concerning the events that bombard me.
The other element is to spend some time outdoors. In my home and office, the walls and roof that keep me safe can also enclose me in a prison of angst. I can lose my perception of the inherent goodness of Creation and the positive actions of so many decent human beings that oppose our national state of dysfunction.
As humans we are recent arrivals to a world of beauty that has been around for millions of years and will continue once I am gone. The birds, bees, flowers, trees, fish, etc., and landscapes and skyscapes, remind me of the eternal quality of existence.
So those two elements let me reground myself, see beyond the antics of the tyrannical regime of our day, and gaze into the timelessness and beauty of our world.
I am neither mystic nor psychologist— please share your successful techniques on which you rely for joy. I need all the help you can offer.
My inspiration for this post: https://email.cac.org/t/d-e-skjlkdt-tlkrjkkrtk-a/
For me, noticing beauty is an orientation, and that brings a spark of joy. Beautiful colours, people's faces, sunlight on water -- it's everywhere. Just waiting for us to notice.
I have to start each morning, stretching outside, reaching for the sun and feeling the sun on my face and listening to nature wake up the birds, singing the leaves dancing on the trees. And of course thanking God for another new day. All of that brings me so much joy