~ A Joy Warrior's Journey
Until I heard your trilling notes
floating through my kitchen windows,
(which are opened
for the first time this year,
and oh, how sweet the breeze!)
and followed the sound to you,
so glad in the budding branches,
I had no idea that a tiny sparrow’s heart
could hold such joy.
Spring beauties cover the hillside now,
hundreds and hundreds of them,
closing in the rain, opening in joy
when the sunshine bursts through
the endless banks of cloud.
I found this tiny troupe of them
In the moss today, dancing
for an audience of speedwells
in an overture for spring
whose melody reached to
the very center of my heart,
filling it with the One Song,
Yes.
This is the grand spring rush, the tumbling of waters
down from the hills, fast and glad, pouring the catch
of rivulets, creeks and streams down, down, down
to the great river, miles below, bringing food
for the beaver and fishes, feeding the brush
and the trees that line the banks, clearing debris
from winter, pushing it ashore. And oh, the song of it!
A purposeful roar, smooth and determined, rolling on
for days. Down. Down. Down.
Look at you. After all that rain,
that soggy soil, the sunless gray
day after day, there you are,
little one, bright and laughing
as if you just woke up in paradise.
Patches of blue peeked through the clouds
in mid-morning, disappeared, appeared again.
I watched the dance. As the hour neared
when the eclipse would be at its peak here,
a hundred miles east of the totality, the air,
moist and warm, grew still. Somewhere
across the valley, a dog gave a single bark.
No traffic passed on the road below. Birds
were silent. I watched as color evaporated
from everything around me, fading light
turning even the sky’s blue spaces gray.
The trees and I stood together watching,
feeling the immensity of it, feeling lucky
somehow to be observing such a thing.
Why, just look at the way the clouds magnify
the remaining visible light! Isn’t that a sight!
While you wait for the waters to recede
and for the emergence of green,
I will continue to dance for you.
I will continue to sing.
‘Though there be snowflakes,
And ‘though there be rain,
spring’s stage is set, and soon
she’ll raise her curtain. Until then,
I will continue to dance for you.
I will continue to sing.
I have a little present for you today, something you can do that will give you an increased sense of meaning, a bit of ordinary everyday magic that we, who are so blessed in so many ways, all too often overlook. And that magic goes by the name of gratitude.
Willing to try a quick experiment? Think of somebody you love—a family member, a friend, even a pet. You can even choose someone from your past if you like. Now just for a few moments, put your open hand over your heart, feel its warmth, close your eyes and holding your loved one in mind, allow yourself just to feel the sensations in your heart area. Don’t let thoughts about that person take your attention; just sit quietly and feel your appreciation. Go ahead and do that right now, then slowly open your eyes and come back to reading.
I asked you to do that because when we read about gratitude, we’re just feeding our minds. I wanted you to connect with the heart-glow that gratitude gives you.
Like all the positive emotions, gratitude is short-lived, fleeting. And yet it has a unique and special power to enrich us and expand our sense of well-being. It opens the door for other good feelings to enter.
What brought it to mind for me was a link a friend sent me to a heart-warming video about artist Lori Portka. She decided to create 100 little gratitude cards and to send them to 100 people in her life. In the video, she shares what she learned about gratitude in the process and you get to see the way that her experiment touched other people’s lives.
It reminded me of the time a friend of mine in Japan sent a gratitude postcard to 30 people over the course of the month. He, too, discovered the powerful magic that gratitude holds.
Gratitude can be both external and internal. We can be grateful for things “out there,” such as other people, or our homes, or jobs, or a sunny day, or soft socks. Or it can be internal, focusing on our gratitude for our health, for our breathing lungs, for the way we think, for our senses of humor, for experiences.
Once I wrote the story of a woman who made a practice of pausing for gratitude at the endings of things:
She uses endings that occur throughout her day as a trigger for remembering to tune in to her gratitude. When a conversation ends, or a class, or when she leaves a room or a building, or completes a project or a task, she closes it by taking a few seconds to appreciate what she has just experienced and to feel gratitude for it.
Imagine what this practice could do for your marriage or your relationship with your kids or parents or a business partner or colleague? Imagine taking a moment to feel gratitude every time you ended an exchange with one of them! Powerful stuff!
If you do nothing else to cultivate gratitude in your life, each night as you prepare to sleep, celebrate the day’s ending, letting yourself recall one or two things from your day for which you are grateful, and just as you did at the beginning of this letter, let yourself sink into the feeling of heart-felt appreciation and to relax for a moment in its glow.
Wishing you a week brimming with gratitude and joy! And let me add my thanks to you for reading the thoughts I share. It adds meaning and purpose to my life, and that’s a pretty special gift to give someone.
Warmly,
Susan
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Because the trees, bless them, are withholding their leaves,
the honeyed sun pours itself into the creek,
and all the minnows and tadpoles wiggle in its warmth.
By the time the leaves are grown, so will they be.
Still, along the banks, the brush is taking on green
and wild flowers peek through last year’s carpet.
The stream, fed by recent snow and rain, is full
and rushing, and the smooth rocks beneath it
feel its motion and hear its song. At last, it is springtime,
and here, in the creek’s world, every living thing
is glad.
I croon to you each morning
in soft, low tones, “wooo-oooo-oooo,”
not, as some suppose, from grief—
far be it—but to ease you gently
from your web of dreams
into the dawning day.
Float into its light simply,
and let its radiance bathe
your heart with peace.
What fastidious detail in each of these spring flowers!
How can there not be a Who behind their being?
Such beauty! And eyes to behold it, and minds
to wonder, and hearts to understand.
All this, every bit exquisite, each detail,
from a tender grape hyacinth out beyond
the farthest star. And to think that all of it
is but one flash-like fleck eternally riding on
radiating waves amidst a brilliance of flashes,
world upon world upon world. Why, you can’t
even see its beginning, or its end! So I ask,
how can there not be a Who?
When all this wonder dances in endless joy
through every molecule of being and through
all the spaces beyond, and between, and within,
how can there not be a Who?