What better instructors could there be in the subject of joy … than children and dogs? I think almost everything I know about joy, I learned from living with dogs. Whether it is the happy dance of greeting they do when someone walks through the door or the unabashed delight in the same old food appearing in the dish once again or in their unrestrained energy for whatever may be at the end of the leash … joy abounds. Sometimes joy is simply in losing themselves to a scent or feeling the wind in their face as they run freely.
What has always amazes me is their ability to experience joy in so many simple, unsophisticated things in the daily rhythm of life. Maybe it comes from a purity of spirit or a capacity to live almost entirely in the present tense … they don’t seem to grieve time’s tale ahead of time … the joy of the morning walk isn’t diminished by the fact that it will be followed by being left at home alone for rest of the day … There is a great capacity to be captured and raptured by the moments that delight … and seemingly finding an eternity within them.
Children remind us that we were born with a capacity for joy … no one had to teach us delight … it came naturally and we found it in the simplest things … like this child in the bathtub, we could find it over and over again in the same simple thing … joy wasn’t lost to repetition … it was found in the simple delight and the contagion of sharing delight in another.
In the midst of the storied Christmas season celebrated in the cold and dark of winter, set in a dark and dangerous time … and into the midst of fearful characters another character bursts onto the scene to dispel fear and instruct in joy … every year the story brings us the one who says “do not be afraid, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all people …”
And it is not just in the midst of this ancient tale that we are schooled in joy but as the contemporary poet reminds us … we were born for joy … “to look, to listen, to lose myself inside this soft world … to instruct myself over and over in joy … nor am I talking about the exception … but of the ordinary, the common, the very drab, the daily presentations” (Mindful, Mary Oliver)
To instruct ourselves in joy requires discipline to resist being numbed, to root ourselves in the moments that could kill us with delight … to be anchored in what is good, true, beautiful and life giving … to give our attention and energy to the shining moments … As we enter the returning light and the gifts of this season, how can we nourish our childlike wonder, recover joy … enliven those capacities that will help us do what we were born for … to live fully and love deeply?
-Nancy Steeves
Comments are closed