High on Happiness

Posts Tagged ‘believe’

They were told, of course, before they volunteered for the Earth adventure, that it wouldn’t be easy.   Earth, after all, was an experimental world, far from settled, and subject to great extremes.

It was a place of breathless beauty and exquisite pleasures, to be sure.  But they were balanced by hardships severe enough to test the bravest soul.

The crocuses volunteered eagerly nonetheless.  To hold true to your mission on Earth, to spread your petals and blossom there was to win the gold.

But it wasn’t the gold they were after.  It wasn’t even the thrill of the adventure.  What really and truly motivated them was the opportunity to express the depth of their love for their mission: to spread joy to the farthermost edges of the inhabited universe, to express it even in the wilds of time and space.

In their hearts they knew that was the key: to hold fast to believing, no matter what, in the sanctity of spreading joy.

And so when the snows fell on their freshly opened petals, they folded themselves carefully inward and quietly chanted their creeds of happiness.  When the winds blew and the night brought frost, they turned their thoughts to their mission, and murmured to one another, “I believe; I believe,” until they fell asleep.

Finally, just as their last bit of strength was fading, the sun rose over the rim of the hills.  And at the touch of its very first rays, the little flowers felt hope rippling through them and a delicious, growing warmth.

One by one, they began to open their petals, gingerly at first, and then in sudden bursts of delight.  Before the sun was even half way up its climb, they were standing tall and broad and open, and their laughter spilled across the lawn and into the air.  It rose to the treetops, where it kissed the morning birds and sailed up to the sky in gladness and praise for the Great Yes who had sent them.  And the Great Yes echoed back their gladness, and the Earth was filled with joy.

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You don’t have to believe in hope, in goodness, in love.  You can chalk it all up to physics if you want to.  (Although that seems a bit of a stretch to me.)

Its okay if you think the perception of beauty is nothing more than a learned response to patterns of stimuli, or that the whole wondrous cosmos (with its spinning galaxies and beating hearts and all) has no consciousness perpetually giving birth to it.

But I have to tell you that when I see salmon chrysanthemums cupping little earth-globes in their centers, something happens inside me that mathematics just can’t explain.

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Sometimes, to keep faith that the world is a place where goodness and beauty reign is not an easy thing.

The din of global conflicts and catastrophes, both natural and man-made, can be deafening, so saturated are we with their sound.  The darkness of the world’s struggles, inhumanity and pain, painted as they are with such wide, deep brushes across the lens of every public medium, can blind us to the existence of hope’s light.

But the light remains, as does the music.  And if you will but hold to your belief in them, they will come to you in gifts of grace, penetrating your despair with their truth and power.

The goodness and beauty of life far outweigh the shadows.  They are the essence of reality, upholding and sustaining it, always available, eternally present, even when we are lost in confusion.

Your very longing for them is the proof of their existence.  You would not weep over the world’s turmoil if you heart didn’t know the reality of peace.  You wouldn’t despair over conflict if you didn’t know the beauty of kindness and the light that a wisp of love can cast.

So believe, even when darkness overwhelms you, even when pain crushes out your reason.  Keep faith, and when you least expect it, a shaft of light will find you, a gift of grace will appear, gently singing life’s endless, beautiful, comforting song.