High on Happiness

Posts Tagged ‘peace’

Deep, deep, deep within us, beneath the rush, beneath the doubt and uncertainty, under all the questions, happiness flows.  It’s not a thing unto itself; you can’t hold it in your hand.  It’s a quality of being.  In fact, its being’s essence.

Happiness is the fragrance given off by the love at the center of the great Yes.  It’s the music of the eternal dance, the starlight of the infinite sky.  It rides on contentment’s sighs, and on the petals of flowers.  It cavorts in laughter and in great heaps of clouds.  It paints the breath of babies and the wings of birds.  It flows in sunlight and shadows, and glides across the faces of mountains and the surfaces of streams.

Within the human heart, it’s the gloriousness of gratitude, the tenderness of kindnesses given and received.  It’s confidence and pride in achievement.  It’s hope in the darkness and joy in the dawn.

Happiness comforts and lifts, delights and inspires.  It erupts in mirth and frolics in fun.  It creeps into our minds as curiosity and interest and sends us probing into mysteries and miracles galore.  It bubbles up as pleasure and towers up as awe.  And when you dive into its depths it enfolds you in its rapture and fills you with the sound of peace, singing.

Gratitude opens as golden as dawn, unfolding the petals of the heart.  In its light, joy sings, peace reigns, hope bursts forth.

Its warmth dissolves fear.  Its power blots out lack.  It comforts and satisfies and fills.

To taste gratitude is to taste the nectar of life.  Its richness revives us and reveals life’s worth.  It drenches us in complete acceptance.

It comes as a gift, humbling us and making us whole.  Its gentle flame kindles our desire to extend ourselves to one another, to give of our talents, to participate in life with gladness and joy.

In the beauty of its light, we sense our connection to all that is, and to the undying Yes that dissolves all the mysteries.  “Be at peace,” it whispers to our hearts and through them.  “All is well, and you are loved.”

The heart of happiness knows all your sorrows.  It tastes your jealousies and anger, and understands your grief and pain.  And when they visit you, these seasons of darkness, happiness wraps them in webs of its compassionate light.

You may feel it only as a longing for relief; but that longing itself is happiness reminding you of its presence and peace.

The heart of happiness is the radiance that shines from the core of your being, from the center of your every cell, from the center of all that is.  It flows beneath your sadness as ceaselessly as it flows beneath your joy.  Its light enfolds your tears as tenderly as it sings with your laughter.

Your emotions are but melodies playing on its surface, the colors that dapple its flow.  And it dances with them, and with your thoughts and with your dreams, sparkling them with its clarity, bathing them in its beauty, endlessly pulsing its oceanic love.

It fills all the spaces; it sings in the silence; it breathes its light everywhere, to the ends of the universe and beyond.

And it knows you, intimately, as its child.  And it whispers without ceasing, “All is well.  You are loved.”

For all life’s unexpected turns, it’s patches of shade and shadow, its dips into deep valleys and challenging climbs back to the light, isn’t it, still, such a lovely, winding road?

For all its unwanted goodbyes, and nights of fear-filled darkness, its frozen winters and days of endless rain, isn’t it, still, such a matchless journey?

Think of the eyes that look into your own with love.  Think of touching a baby’s toes.  Think of watching a sunrise, of hearing a child’s laugh.

Think of the fragrance of lavender, the texture of velvet, the sound of waves lapping on the shore.

Think of fat clouds in a blue sky, heaped taller than mountains.  Think of mountains and forests and deserts and seas.

Think of your childhood and all you have done since then.  Think what it will be like, looking back on today when you’ve traveled twenty more years.  Think what your face will look like when you’re eighty.

Think of the fun you have had, the work you have done, the friends you have made, the places you’ve seen.  Think of all the music you know, the stories you have heard, the books you have read, the games you have played, the arts you’ve enjoyed, the teams you have cheered.

Think of the warmth of sunlight on your skin on an early spring day, of a sky full of stars and air full of song.  Think of the fragrance of freshly mown grass and of lilacs and of the ocean.

Think of walruses and penguins, of butterflies and kangaroos.  Think about a camera flying light years into space to send you postcards from the nebulae and galaxies.

Think of all thoughts you have thought, the facts you have learned, the puzzles you have solved.  Think of all the questions that have never been answered and never will be.  Think of all the dreams you have dreamed and of those that still wait for you to make them come true.

Think of all the emotions that have coursed through your soul, the passions and the longing, the hilarity and the peace.  Think how your lungs have breathed so much air, how your heart has pumped whole rivers of blood through your veins.  Think how wondrous ears are, and eyelids.

Think of all the people you have touched and loved and who have loved and touched you.

Oh yes.  For all its dips and shadows, isn’t it, still, such a lovely, winding road?

From the earliest days of spring, the Joepyweed watched the other wildflowers blossom in the field around her, wondering what she herself would be when she grew up.

First came the coltsfoot, so tiny and bright.  Then the shy violet, fragrant and lovely in shape and in hue, and the delicate pastel blossoms of the fruit trees.  Oh, such beauty!  Surely she, too, would soon burst with sculpted petals and perfume the summer air.

But as the days passed, each one bringing forth another bit of colorful splendor, she wasn’t blossoming at all.  All she seemed able to produce was a tall, thick stem and big, bulky leaves.

She was, she thought, hardly the picture of grace.  In fact, as her chunky stem shot higher and higher, rising above every other plant around her, she fell into a deep sadness, concluding that she was some ugly deviant of nature.

Below her, as the sun passed the equinox and the days began growing shorter again, she watched the daisies and clover and thistles bloom, and at last the sweet yarrow and Queen Anne’s lace.  At least, she thought, she had the perfect vantage point for watching each one come into season, blossom and fade.

She had long since accepted that her dreams of personal beauty were not meant to be.  Now, she spent her days feasting on the beauty the other plants produced.  She noticed that, for all their loveliness, their life spans were brief, their days of glory short-lived.  Perhaps beauty wasn’t everything, she thought, and she began to feel a growing sense of gratitude for the gifts of height and longevity that nature had given her.

Then, one day, as the late summer sun burned away the morning’s mists, she felt an unfamiliar tingle at the edges of the small stalks that had risen from her clumps of leaves.  She was budding!  She was actually budding!  She could hardly contain her astonishment and joy.

Time flew past as she watched her buds swell and open, and she laughed as she saw the fluffy clusters of orchid-colored strands that they produced.  I’m still more a clown than a beauty, she thought.  But the bees loved her and she loved the way the breeze felt as it danced through her feathery petals.  And she was glad for them and at peace and happy in her life.

Even as we celebrate our own joy, let us offer an invocation for all who have not yet found their paths to happiness.

May all who suffer undeserved pain
(for all pain is undeserved),
who unwittingly fall into strife
(for all strife is unwitting),
who wrestle with nightmare monsters
(for all evil is an unreal masquerade)
find comfort, healing and peace.

May all who suffer misery awaken.  May all who live with falsehood find truth.  May all hardness be met with mercy and all harshness be soothed by kind hands.

May those who are caught in arrogance be humbled. May those who think themselves low find their worth.  May those who are forgotten be recognized.  May the alienated find belonging and the lonely find friends.

May our darkness give way to light, our doubt be turned to faith, our fear to strength, and our confusion to understanding.  May we be touched by grace, opened to beauty, moved by goodness and surrendered to love.

For we all are children of the universe, of the illimitable, omnipresent Yes.  May we know its truth and dance in its glad song.

My gift to you today is a quote from Fra Giovanni Giocondo, an Italian architect, engineer and archeologist from the 15th Century.   His message is my own, and I share it with you with deep happiness. . .

“I am your friend and my love for you goes deep.  There is nothing I can give you which you have not got.  But there is much, very much, that, while I cannot give it, you can take.

“No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in today.
Take heaven!

“No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present little instant.
Take peace!

“The gloom of the world is but a shadow.
Behind it, yet within our reach, is joy.”

Indeed.  Reach for joy.

That which gave rise to the vast dynamic cosmos with all its sparkling stars and to the deserts with their countless grains of sand, and to the livingness of fishes and whales and of orangutans, also painted, with such exquisite tenderness and delicacy, the rose.

Is that not enough to convince you that all is as it should be?  That you were meant to be, right this very moment, exactly as you are?

It doesn’t matter that we cannot grasp it, that it is larger and higher than our tiny minds can know.  It’s enough that we can sing and see and laugh and yes, cry and long and wonder.  Be at peace; you are loved and all is well.

That which gave rise to man, the music maker, the dreamer of dreams, the role player extraordinaire in the great cosmic drama, that which fashioned eyes and fingertips and opposing thumbs, that which gave rise to the sexes and to the grand tensions between them, which gave them the capacity for worship and joy, which breathed life into their lungs and heaven into their imaginations (that they might suspect), and set before them whole fluid worlds of possibilities: made you and is you and sings you and knows your unique name.

And you were meant to be, from the very beginning, exactly as you are, right this very moment.  Be at peace.  You are loved and all is well.

Grab yourself a mind canoe and drift down the quiet stream.  Let the winds and waves dance elsewhere; this hour is for you.

This is the hour when contentment reigns, when the garish colors of the day melt into mere reflections that float on the surface of the deep and flowing now.  This is the place where all that surrounds you is wealth and a profusion of serenity, and you are one with it and whole.

Round the bends smoothly; let the stream carry you where it may.  Watch thoughts glimmer past like small fishes darting through the fronds; you have no need to catch them or to hold them in your hand.

Breathe in the cool air, perfumed with the fragrance of pure being; breathe out, adding your own essence to the perfume.  And just glide, glide, easily glide on the calm and endlessly flowing stream.

Scenes drift past.  They do not hold you, for you have become one with the stream, with its liquid hymn of harmony and its smooth, smoothing flow.  And you glide and glide, and easily glide.

And when you are refreshed, you gently steer your mind to shore.  Then, stepping from the stream, you follow the patches of sunlight back to the place from which you began, and you find it newly drenched with peace and whispering yes.

As I swept my large front porch today, I suddenly remembered the rockers stored in my fruit cellar.  They’re fine old pieces, these two, sturdy and well built, and hauling them out has become for me a ritual that ushers in summer.

They were gifts from a friend who had inherited them from his grandparents.  He had no room for them in his apartment and wanted them to be somewhere that they would feel at home.

I think they like my porch, with its view of the meadow and wooded rolling hills.  I sit in the grandmother’s chair at sunset, and sometimes the old man who owns the field behind mine comes to sit in the other one and sip a glass of iced tea.

I watch the little chimney swifts dart above the pines at sunset, their silvery chirps so bright that I’ve come to call them “the sparkle birds.”    Their song is the descant to the other songbirds’ evening chorus.

Sometimes, when the night is very still, I sit in Grandma Mitchell’s rocker and watch the stars.  I imagine that I hear her and Grandma Mitchell talking about the how the crops are doing and about the weather in the quiet way long-married people talk at the close of the day.

I breathe in the sweetness of the grass and listen to the crickets who continue the evensong after the birds have tucked themselves in for the night.  It’s my hour for savoring, for drinking in the serenity of the night and letting my mind drift through time and out to the starry skies.

It’s a time of peace and beauty.  And often I wish we would all make more time just to sit on a porch, or a roof, or a stoop, just watchin’ the world go by.