Overflowing Joy

At that very moment, Jesus overflowed with joy from the Holy Spirit and said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because You’ve hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and shown them to babies. Indeed, Father, this brings you happiness.”

                                                                                                    Luke 10:21

I would have loved to see Jesus overflow with joy. I don’t recall having read such a description of Jesus elsewhere, but I can imagine it. Can you? 

This verse is part of the story of the seventy-two who have been sent out and have now returned to share their experiences. Imagine the excitement they brought, and Jesus, in the thick of their excitement, exclaiming with joy to God! It is a glimpse, surely, of what heaven must be, and the overflowing joy that is part and parcel of eternal life. 

I’ve had those moments of overflowing joy, and I’m sure you’ve had them too. Last weekend, I was in the North Georgia mountains, and one morning, as I sat outside in the crisp, cool air, I saw the sun strike the mountain in front of me. It brought tears to my eyes, a moment of overflowing joy. We experience such moments, and most of them take place in events of everyday life. Something clicks, and we are present in a way that is hard to describe. If we do try to describe it, we cannot adequately convey why it is such a moment for us.

Maybe such moments are when we actually experience the world with childlike wonder. Jesus speaks of things being hidden from the wise and intelligent and shown instead to babies. To overflow with joy requires that we lay aside being “reasonable” and embrace imaginative delight, that we receive God’s kingdom, which is everywhere, all around us, as a child.

Are you open to experiencing overflowing joy? Are you willing to let go of stiff, stuffy adulting to see the ordinary as extraordinary, with the eyes of a child?

Talk

Some people talk so brilliantly

That we get small and vanish.

                             From Thoughts, Robert Bly

 

Invisible whenever guests came,

longing to engage in conversation but overpowered.

Did my presence even matter to you?

Damn you, let me speak! Turn the spotlight

off yourself. Words that fell on deaf ears

because I was small in your eyes.

Now you don’t see me at all. I’m gone,

done with invisibility, smallness.

Go ahead, fill the house with your brilliance,

your many words. Talk your fool head off.

I am where my presence matters,

shining like the sun.

Stubbornness or Adventure

Last week I was in the mountains for some time away. I didn’t go to the mountains with a plan to hike to waterfalls, but most days, those were the trails I chose.

One day I found a great place to eat lunch by a waterfall. As I ate, I noticed leaves that, instead of being washed downstream, were stubbornly clinging to rock, even though water was rushing forcefully over them. I cannot explain how they managed to hold on tightly where they were.

Certainly, there is a time to hold fast, but also there is a time to let go. I thought about the adventure of riding the current of the stream, and how, if we are too intractable, we miss out on the grand adventure that is life. To let go makes one vulnerable, because we cannot know what lies downstream for us.

However, staying stuck to the rock means those leaves will slowly disintegrate right where they are. We can wither when we are stubborn. We can stick so hard to a belief, a way of living, a job, that we wither away in that position. I have certainly known people whose stubbornness kept them from experiencing growth and adventure in their lives. To take hold of life means a willingness to live in the flow, even when that flow takes us through difficult or painful changes. A life immune from risk isn’t much life at all.

Praising Plants

Even the mountains and the hills will burst into song before you;
    all the trees of the field will clap their hands.                                                       Isaiah 55:12

Anthropomorphic descriptions are plentiful in scripture. Maybe you’ve watched a tree sway in the wind and imagined it clapping its hands.  As fall colors begin to appear, mountains do look like they are bursting into song. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “The earth laughs in flowers.”

A couple of weeks ago I repotted a very potbound spider plant. Its leaves were brown on the ends and when I watered it, the water quickly filled the dish under the pot. It had several plants in it that needed to be separated into their own pots. I had known for a long time that it needed some attention, but it kept making the “do later” list.

This past weekend I was looking at the repotted plants. I felt I could almost hear them exclaiming with delight at their new digs. They truly look happy! In fact, one of the plants is making spider babies already!

All of which makes me wonder, what is it within me that needs space to grow? What do I need to stop putting off and give time and attention to so it can spread its roots and thrive?  When I actually took the time to repot my plant, it really didn’t take that long. It mostly took being prioritized. I just needed to commit about half an hour to the project.

Maybe what is languishing in you, suffering from lack of attention, just needs a small amount of time and space to take root and grow. Making the time and space for a dream to root and grow is an act of praise to God. A thriving desire given time and attention to flourish is a way you show your delight for the gifts and abilities God has placed in you.

I am inspired by my spider plants to tend my “inner garden.” I hope their example likewise inspires you!

Letter to a Fly

Dear fly, (though I don’t really mean the “dear” part)

why must you ceaselessly circle my head,

occasionally tangling in my hair, or

clumsily crashing into my cheek, or worse,

my lips?

I know you are a child of God, as am I.

St. Francis would have called you brother.

I’ve tried to imagine you as guardian angel

keeping me safe as I walk in the woods, but it

stretches beyond the reach of my imagination.

Were you more calm, maybe marking the place

in my psalter, as your kin did for Saint Colman

I might have more affection for you.

Your presence, however, reminds me

I do not yet fully love as God loves.

I have some growing to do.

Forest Silence

The silence of forest isn’t

absence of sound. Rather the sound

belongs. Wind rustling leaves, a

woodpecker’s thrumming, chorus

of tree frogs or crickets, bird song.

 

Nothing out of place.

I breathe.

My feet crunch leaves lightly.

I try to belong, let myself be wild.

Live!

Being saved from death is

not the same as saving

a life. What good is it

to survive, if you don’t live?

I don’t mean, of course, having

a pulse, breath, the daily

maintenance of eating, sleeping.

 

I mean feeling wind on your skin,

savoring chocolate, a glass of wine,

the wonder of seeing a sunrise

or a dear friend’s face.

 

I mean, of course, the way

your heart beats wildly

with joy when something thrills

you, or beats with fear

when you risk yourself or

feel pain. You see, living is not

playing safe, staying behind fences

or locked doors. That may let you

survive, but already you’re dead.

 

Life wants to be lived,

   out loud,

      no holds barred,

         all in.

Then

when death does come, it comes--

an exclamation point at the end

of life’s story, a cause for

celebration.