Good morning, Digital Neighbors! Happy Monday Friends & Refuges, Early Birds & Later Dayers, Conversants & Lurkers, Phamily & Misfits, ADD Irregulars, Weird Shit Niche Aficionados and all the rest of you Wanderers, Seekers, and Lost on Locals. Blessed & Happy Easter to all! I was away for Lent, but I hope to make more frequent visits to the Report and the PHAM. I hope you all have been well. In Cath-o-landia the Easter season is meant to be days of joy, David Whyte has a great reflection on joy in Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words.

JOY
Few things will attract people to you or your passions than the joy with which you embrace them. It is one of the most intoxicating realities in life. What or who brings you joy is so amazing as to seem almost magical and all consuming. Joyful people are naturally attractive, the joyless are universally repulsive. I don't mean sorrowful or troubled souls, I mean joyless, embittered souls who feel that life is not a gift but an obligation that some cosmic reality or social community failed to deliver. The joyless souls are multiplying, people seduced that life owes them something, that they have been cheated by the joy and prosperity of others. The joyless are the envious, and they will never know any solace let alone experience the joy they so resent. Enough Tommy-boy, on to David Whyte and his wisdom. I am sure I will have more ramblings to share. 😁

JOY is a meeting place, of deep intentionality and of self-forgetting, the bodily alchemy of what lies inside us in communion with what formerly seemed outside, but is now neither, but become a living frontier, a voice speaking between us and the world: dance, laughter, affection, skin touching skin, singing in the car, music in the kitchen, the quiet irreplaceable and companionable presence of a daughter. The sheer intoxicating beauty of the world inhabited as an edge between what we previously thought was us and what we thought was radically other than us:

Self-forgetting - so, so, so much the opposite of this current chapter of reality in the WEST when self-obsession has mutated into intersectionality wars and grievance mongering at previously unseen levels. It is a bitter irony that when I obsess about myself, I have a far greater chance of never understanding who I am. Self-reflection and self-obsession seem so similar at onset but yield very different fruits. Self-reflection knocks at the door of self-awareness, of wondering about your story and its unfolding chapters. Self-obsession almost always gets mired in the woundedness of life and never gets past real or imagined injuries. Not only do you not knock on the door of self-awareness, but you also accept that you are the summation of your wounds and shortcomings. It is the serpent's whisper leading you away from your true self and selling you the empty promise.

dance, laughter, affection, skin touching skin, singing in the car, music in the kitchen, the quiet irreplaceable and companionable presence of a daughter.

So, so many joys in life. Once one is open to the gift of living, life can become an endless parade of joy. There will always be trials, sorrows, and disappointments, but there are so many hidden and surprising joys to be received and celebrated in life. It is difficult not to end the majority of my days in gratitude.

Sheer intoxicating beauty - it is one of the reasons I look for all those barn and other photos that I so often share with these posts. It is one of the things I find most hopeful about social media when I see expressions of beauty and joy in your shared photos and musings here. There is so much more beauty in life than ugliness. There is so much more joy to share than the bitterness that isolates and warps our attitude and eventually our soul.

To feel a full and untrammelled joy is to have become fully generous; to allow ourselves to be joyful is to have walked through the doorway of fear, the dropping away of the anxious, worried self, felt like a thankful death itself, a disappearance, a giving away, overheard in the laughter of friendship, the vulnerability of happiness and the vulnerability of its imminent loss, felt suddenly as a strength, a solace and a source: the claiming of our place in the living conversation, the sheer privilege of being in the presence of a mountain, a sky or a well-loved familiar face. I was here, and you were here, and together we made a world.

Untrammeled - a word seldom seen or used. Fun stuff with words!!!! I noticed that spell check prefers the one L instead of two LLs. I speak 'Merikan, not English. 😉
To become fully generous - that is a praiseworthy goal for our striving. I suspect it is something like humility, when you pass that threshold, you don't know it, but everyone around you does as they become the recipients of your generosity of heart. The laughter of friendship, the vulnerability of happiness, strength, solace, and a source - such a gift with words to open a well of meaning on just a single word/reality called joy. David Whyte has some great things to share and he has stirred my soul in deeper appreciation.

the claiming of our place in the living conversation, the sheer privilege of being in the presence of a mountain, a sky or a well-loved familiar face.

Have a great day my digital neighbors!