High on Happiness

Posts Tagged ‘freedom’

Hidden in every moment a pallet of possibilities awaits.  A flicker of thought, caught, can change everything.

Forget the routine.  What is your heart calling you to do?  To feel?  So see?

What if you turned up the light just a little?  Decided to add a dab of play?  Stretched a line out in a new direction?

Take a chance.  Push the limits.  Transcend the expected.

Don’t let can’t hold you back; attitude is everything.  It makes its own rules. Reach for freedom and joy.

In the end, you get to choose.  With all these splendid colors before you, how would you like to paint the day?

For the gloriousness of breath and being, let your hearts erupt with joy!  For thought, and choice, and freedom, raise your hands in praise.

Dance for the depths and heights of feeling, for being moved to laughter and to tears.  Applaud the awe and inspiration, the serenity and hope, the courage and the pride, that move through you in kaleidoscopic flow, giving life texture and meaning.

Stand in ovation over the compassion that flows from your heart, and the tenderness.  Applaud the  satisfaction that follows your labors.  Applaud the hours of rest and leisure that refresh and restore.

Revel over the dawn and the brightness of noon, the sweep of sunset’s hues, the midnight’s starry skies.  Delight in the sweet grasses and bright flowers, in the stately trees and glistening sands.  Salute the wide oceans, the jungles, the soaring rocky peaks. Revel over the bounteousness of life, over its endless variety and unfailing strength.

Make merry for the giggles of children and the smiles of the old women and men, for the love that dances, in all its colors,  from heart to heart to heart.

For the endless song that sings the Great Yes,  reverberate in boundless celebration and be glad.

Massive vines of wild white roses cascade through the deep green woods that line the roadsides and fields.  I imagine they’re snowballs that slid through the dimensions from some wintry world to cool us on these sultry June days.

My old neighbor, Bob, hates them.  Well, not the flowers.  It’s their big, sharp thorns that get him.

This year he’s been too busy to take up his war with them.  But normally he drives along the edge of his field on his big old Case tractor spraying every one he can spot with poison.

He tells a story about a World War II pilot who had to abandon his plane when it was shot down.  The pilot, he says, landed in a huge hedge covered with them.  When the enemy found him there, tangled, torn and bleeding, they let him go, figuring he’d earned his freedom.

I suppose I’ll think about Bob and about that pilot whenever I see them.  It’s funny how things get linked together like that in your mind.

But I got even with him.  Every time he tells me his story, I tell him mine: They’re snowballs that fall from heaven, I say, when the cherubs have a snowball fight.

I caught him walking past a clump of them the other day, snorting and mumbling, “Humph. Snowballs,” under his breath.  It made me smile.

Interpret it as you will.  Call it allegory, call it myth.  Take the current account as literal truth.  It doesn’t matter.

What matters is that inside you, something is drawn by the Light.  Something in you longs for the Word that will make all things clear, give you hope, give you peace, let you understand, heal you, love you, set you free.

And once, we are told, the Great Yes took on human form and came to live among us, offering all this and more, pointing the way, living it for our benefit.

And even though its passage through the sands of time and across a multitude of cultures has woven countless versions of the tale, its essence remains.  Its truth lives within us still and sings to us in the darkness, bringing hope, kindling the flame of faith, of belief that all our highest ideals are rooted in it somehow, and through it will one day blossom and bear fruit.

Past the farthest reaches of our reason, beyond our limited capacity to understand, the Great Yes speaks to us still, to our hearts, to our spirits, to our souls.  It beckons us.  It radiates love and joy.  It tells us we are one with it, and with each other.

In it lies fulfillment, and peace, and freedom, and boundless potential.

And on this night, we sing of the legend, we sing of the story.  We sing of the birth of Love and Light, of Peace and Good Will, personified in a being who took on human form that we might be truly known.  And our hearts overflow with the joy of it, and burst with a grand Alleluia, in praise, in worship, in thanksgiving.

And from the heart of the cosmos, the Source of it all, the Giver of Life, echoes back our joy and, calling us each by name, whispers, “All is well, my child.  Be at peace. You are loved.”

After a day of celebration yesterday with the Michigan branch of my family, I spent most of this Independence Day driving across breadth of Ohio.

Beneath a hazy blue sky heaped with whipped cream clouds stretched mile after mile of lush, green farmland, dotted by red barns and century old farm homes.  It seemed a fitting backdrop for the day, representing as it did, America’s heartland.

Occasionally, as I switched radio stations, I would happen on a tribute to American independence, an array of vignettes and views, each with its own flavor, describing some aspect of the still-vibrant Declaration of Independence that marked this nation’s birth.

The most quoted lines from that noble document are familiar to most of us:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

As I listened, I learned that in the days when the Declaration was penned, “pursuit” did not mean “to chase,” but rather “to practice as an activity, to do it regularly, to make a habit of it.”  So what Thomas Jefferson, the author of that line, intended us to understand is that we have an inviolable right to incorporate into our lives those habits that generate happiness.

As it turns out, the most authentic happiness comes from living our deepest personal values.  For that, we require liberty.  We require freedom of inquiry and intellectual exploration; we require that all manner of ideas be freely spoken, and written and shared.  We require the freedom to choose those values that resonate most strongly within our own individual hearts, so that we may live a flourishing life of integrity and meaning.

When we practice the habits that lead to happiness in its deepest, truest sense, we become strong, fair-minded, open-hearted, courageous men and women.  We live authentic lives, full of zest and passion and love and respect for our fellow beings.  We become robust and productive and oriented toward serving one another through the free exercise of our individual talents, skills and strengths.  We become the kinds of citizens the founding fathers envisioned living under the balanced yoke of liberty and law.

No wonder we shoot off fireworks on this day from one end of the land to the other.  No wonder we feel inspired.

Let’s go rolling into childhood where all the world’s at play and giggles reign.  I’ll be a princess and you can be a rock star and we’ll eat ice cream on the moon for breakfast.  And all the animals from the zoo will come, even the zebras and giraffes, on a special rocket ship that sails on rainbow power and leaves glitter in its wake.

And after lunch we can sail our great galleon to a glistening shore on the edge of the Milky Way and build sandcastles that are real, and the animals will have a special garden.

Ballerinas and clowns can stroll through the grounds, picking giant flowers and turning cartwheels on the lawn.  Then it’s hide and seek with the jesters and mimes, and tea sandwiches under the wishing tree where all the toys and teddy bears have come alive and are holding a party.

I’ll stand in the tower in a flowing white gown and blow iridescent joy bubbles over the scene.  And you can play your guitar and watch its notes paint colors on the sky, and from all the distant planets will come a roar of applause, just for you and your song.

Then, because there is no bedtime, we can visit all the rooms in our enchanted castle and watch the dreams that rise from the children of the earth come true, but only the good ones.  And we can marvel at the games that earth’s grownups play and laugh because they think they’re so real.

Yes, let’s go rolling into childhood, where laughter is the currency and freedom reigns. There will be time enough for seriousness on Tuesday.