High on Happiness

Posts Tagged ‘serenity’

She lay in a field all fresh and green that stretched to the far horizon, watching clouds paint scenes of sailing ships and roly-poly bears.  Lipizzaner stallions led a parade and grew wings and became pearly dragons.  And overhead the tree branches swayed and a thousand white doves turned into flowers whose petals drifted down on the breeze.

Down, down, down they fell, light as angel’s wings.  She floated somehow up to meet them and some turned into whispers and wrapped themselves around her like ribbons, dancing and trailing behind her as far as she could see.  And she twirled in the air, laughing, and still the white petals fell, each one singing a note of the song.

“Serenity,” one chimed.  “Happiness,” hummed another.   And soon she was surrounded by a symphony of exquisite sounds:  friendship, grace, generosity, joy, harmony, innocence, goodwill.

The petals were cascading down in waves now, singing every beautiful word she had ever heard, and she thought that she could float on forever.

But at last the shower of petals slowed, gently placing her back on the grass as their music faded away.

She opened her eyes, and there before her, three perfect white crocuses bloomed.  “Faith,” chimed one, every so softly.  “Hope,” piped the second.  “Love,” sang the third.  And she tucked their music in her heart and waltzed home, filled with gladness and joy.

Beyond the rush and drama of the day, and beneath it, breathing itself into the cells of trees, and singing frogs, and sleeping birds, serenity stretches its lush, gossamer sigh.
It’s full of luxury and ease, like a deep mountain pool.

Our buzzings hover above it like hungry mosquitoes. But it is not disturbed.  It wraps them in a cloud of compassion and offers us the nectar of its peace.  Humans, it knows, will do what humans do.

Even so, it seeps into our sleep at night, offering reassurances, painting our deepest dreams with its panoramic view.

Sometimes, when you wake at night, you can even hear its gentle crooning.  “Be at peace, my child,” it whispers.  “All is well, and you are loved.”

“Cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind, filling it with a steady and perpetual serenity.” ~ Joseph Addison

It had a brightness to it that reminded him of mirth.  But no, it was more composed somehow and enduring.  And beyond that, it inspired in him a sort of courage.  “How interesting,” he thought.  And he tucked some in his coat pocket.

The day was cold and gray with low clouds and he turned up his collar as he hurried along, anxious to get home to some warmth and a hot cup of tea.

As he walked, he let his fingers roll over the smooth surface of his find.  It gave off a feeling of benevolence, a kind of reassuring gladness, and touching it, he felt more alive somehow, and hopeful.

He felt a small smile spread over his face, despite the light drizzle that had begun to fall.  “Maybe Mollie will know what it is,” he thought to himself as he turned toward their flat.

He was beaming like a child bringing home a new puppy when he opened the door. “What happened to you?” Mollie said, bursting into a laugh at the sight of him, all wet and smiling.

“Oh, nothing, really,” he said.  “It’s just this interesting stuff I found on my walk.  Here, let me show you.”  He reached into his pocket and spread it out on the table.  “What do you suppose it is?”

“Why, that’s cheerfulness, dear!  Isn’t it beautiful?” she said, tenderly touch its edges with the tip of her fingers.

“Cheerfulness,” he repeated thoughtfully.  “You know, it just seemed to bring such light to my day.  Can we keep it?”

“Of course!  Of course we can, darling!” Mollie said, giving him a hug.  “I think it’s exactly what we needed.  Don’t you?”

And she poured him a cup of steaming, fragrant tea.

Sweet Serenity whispers in dressed as evening, her breath full of lullabies.  She scatters invisible flowers as she glides across our minds and they melt like snowflakes and taste like peace.

She drapes us with silk woven from hummingbird wings and the sighs of sleeping babies. And as she bends to kiss our foreheads, her eyes are filled with stars, each one telling a story about how we are loved, and have been, and will be, beyond the reach of time.

Softly, she pulls the night over us, purple and deep. And it dances with dreamless dreams and carries us past suns and galaxies to a place of wholeness and knowing.  And we hear Serenity’s lullabies echoing all around us.  “Be at peace, my children,” she whispers.  “All is well, and you are loved.”

.

Letting go of summer, of its flowering bright and green, the hills glow with late autumn’s olives and burnished rust.

Letting go the songbirds, the woods rustle with the whisper of falling leaves.

Letting go the star-spangled midnight, the sky turns azure and sings the dawn and the day.

In the great, sweeping harmony of being, time and the seasons roll on and all things ceaselessly transform.

Below the hills, beneath the boughs, the creek spreads itself smooth.  The clouds and sky and glowing colors echo from its surface, sighing the sweet serenity of letting go.

.

Every now and then, in the midst of her song, happiness calls us to rest.  She softens the landscape, turns down the sound, and invites us to pause, and breathe, and be.

She stretches out her little blanket of serenity for us, in a space all smooth and high.

She knows our eagerness to round the next bend, to play the next note, to make the next move in our games, and she laughs and tells us we’ll be there soon enough.

“But first,” she says, unveiling a moment of exquisite beauty, “savor for awhile.  Here, look back on where you’ve been and at all you have accomplished.”

Then she shows us a movie of our labors and play, and we see how they have unfolded and grown us.  And she whispers in our ears, “Well done.”

After the intensity of the workday—a short-staffed crew, a deluge of emergent demands—I greeted the rain with a sigh of relief.

Its soft patter on the sidewalk, the plunking of its fall into rippled puddles, the splooshing sound of passing cars all seemed like music.

I felt myself easing into its gentleness, expanding into the muted colors of the afternoon.

As I drove home, my windshield wipers kept time to the radio’s music and I noticed how the traffic lights streamed their reds and greens onto the wet road.  I thought of a comment I read once by an artist named Hundertwasser about how colors took on such a glow in the rain.  It was, he said, his favorite weather.

We don’t often think of rain as a cause for joy.  But this afternoon, I understood how Hundertwasser could feel the way he did about it.  It’s all in how you look at things, and what you want to find.

I wanted peace and release, and that’s exactly what the rain brought me.  As I stepped from the car in my driveway, I came face to face with a low branch of pine, its needles shimmering with raindrops that looked like pearls just plucked from the sea.   I stood for a moment, taking it all in, filled with the glow of serenity and quiet joy.

It’s all so beautiful, I thought, so perfect.

And so it is.

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.

Ever so softly the snow fell, its countless glistening crystals smoothing the landscape with great, clean curves.  And even though we have had more than our share of it since the month began, its beauty is undeniable.

It erases the sharp edges of things and brings a quiet to the world that evokes a kind of reverence and subtle joy.

Looking out at the newly brushed landscape, I couldn’t help but feel a deep calm and a sense of awe at the sheer majesty of the scene outside my window.

It put me in touch with the serene side of happiness, the sense that we live at the command of a vast beneficence.  It’s the kind of happiness that wears the sparkle of tranquility and that rises from a calm and quiet heart.

The serenity of happiness is a gift that soothes and smoothes the jangled thoughts of our all too busy minds.  It has a transcendent beauty about it that lets you hear the angels sing.  It falls softly with a gentle grace and lets you taste the sweetness of true inner peace.  It’s a whispering of the great yes, a surrender to trusting that all is well, despite the evidence of our limited perceptions.

It comes to you when you practice stilling yourself, when you allow yourself to set your cares and anxieties aside.  It begins with simply breathing, with practicing mindfulness and presence.  The more you allow yourself to soften into relaxation, the wider you open the channels through which happiness flows.  And the more that you open them, the greater your sense of inner peace and joy.