High on Happiness

Archive for the ‘The Nature of Happiness’ Category

Morning raised her curtain to a stage filled with rippling waves of green.  A lark sang, and as the sun rose slowly over the eastern hills, the young ferns began their gentle ballet.

It’s a long dance.  It will stretch into the summer and beyond.  These are but their first steps, filled with the grace and joy of their youth.

They arch their fronds, and hold their heads high, practicing their balance, gaining strength

Theirs is a message of abundance and peace.  To gaze on them brings a soft smile to the face, and comfort to the soul.

(And on top of that, they provide shelter to chipmunks and giggling elves.  I know; I heard both this morning.)

.

A dozen or two varieties of flowers  might have done the job, a dozen or two species of birds, bugs and trees.

Does it really take aardvarks to make the world go ‘round?  Does every snowflake,  seashell and sunset have to be unique?

Maybe not.

But the Great Yes is so in love with possibilities.

It’s kind of like giving a kid a big, fresh box of crayons.

On this glorious day, overflowing with loveliness, all things sing the Great Yes.  The high sky, the tiny ants crawling on the pavement, the tree bark, the stones, everything you can name and all the things whose names you do not know are notes in its symphony.

It is all one love, complete in itself, containing the worlds, becoming them, blinking in and out of expression.

There is nothing to fear, nothing you must do, or be, or earn.  Love made you and is you and sings through you, as surely as it made these hearts dancing in the shade in the corner of the garden.

“Be at peace,” they chime.  “All is well, and you are loved.”

They don’t think they are courageous.  But they keep on slogging along, too encased by boredom and routine to see that they are growing nonetheless.

Still, something deep inside their souls continues to ask: Are these gifts of mine for nothing?  Show me the promised way.  Let me shine. Let me reach. Let me serve.

The longing keeps them awake at night and gnaws at them in the stillness:  I want to be more.

They are colorless and turned inward.  But they keep on keeping on, wrestling their way through endless  days with pleading hearts: Unfold me! Set me free!

Then comes springtime.  And with one green sweep of the loving cosmic wand, answers come, and the promises are fulfilled.

.

Not everyone is meant to find pleasure in social gatherings.  Some are designed to revel in solitude, to stand apart from the press of the crowd.

But don’t misunderstand.  Like all of us, they welcome the meeting of eyes, the warmth of a smile, and, from time to time, a good conversation with a cheerful passer-by.

Some mistake their quiet ways for shyness.  But watch, and you will see them stand unabashed in the sunshine, arms flung wide to the sky.

In dances sweet May, wearing garlands of flowers, drenched with color and joy.  Bluebirds sing from her sun kissed curls, and rainbows flash from her eyes.

From her basket, she tosses gold coins that ring with the laughter of children and turn into petals as they fall.  Moonlight  glints from her shoulders and her fingertips sparkle with stars.

And all around her music plays, and trees waltz and bow as she passes by.  Swans bring their hatchlings to meet her, and fawns come to nuzzle her knees.

And the skies are filled with her love and perfume and all the earth rises in gladness.

Love, like water, flows to the depths and seeks out all the hidden places.

It works its way down, seeping through minute spaces, finding secret openings, dissolving all the barriers in its way.

It rains down from the heights, and cascades over the edges.  It shrinks from no risk.  It washes endlessly against our shores.

It revives the faint and quenches the thirst of the parched and longing.

It sings in the sunshine and dances to the rhythms of the moon.  It’s playful and boundless and free.

It is the gift of life and its carrier; it courses through our hearts and bathes each of our cells.

Love pours down, and returns to itself, over and over, without end.

“Let there be green!” sings sweet April as she makes a final sweep across the land.  “Let there be healing and transformation.  Let there be renewal and joyous, loving life.”

And here below, the last buds open to her command and their tiny leaves burst forth.  The juicy grasses dance in the dewy air, and along the creek’s banks, the mosses come alive.

Then, as newborn animals romp across the emerald fields, and blossoms of every hue wave from every corner, she floats through the arch of a rainbow and disappears, and wee birds sing her song.

Along the trail, the trilliums bloom, pure in their perfection.  They’re fragile blossoms, with a sweet determination to trumpet the few, precious notes that are theirs to sing in the endless, flowing song.

In human terms, their lives are brief.  A week, maybe two, and then they are gone.   But they make the most of their days, setting an example, leaving their lessons.  They revel in the woodland’s light and shade, and dance with the birdsong and breeze.  They broadcast their joy.

May we do as much, rising in gladness, determined to dance and to sing.

Somewhere in the universe, I’d like to believe, thousands of planets sail around their suns tipped just so.  And once in every circling, flowers wake from a winter’s sleep, birds sing, and tiny leaves open on the tips of the trees.

Somewhere, always, it is springtime and life is reinventing itself anew.  The song, with its all its hope and promise, is soaring, and sailing from sphere to sphere.

And wherever we may go when once we leave these earthly shores, may we find ourselves in worlds that are blessed with springtime, to the ends of eternity.