“When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.”~Rumi

I know people who are filled with joy. They seem to have joy bubbling up in a never-ending supply that, if you are wise and fully present, you can allow it to was over you in a baptismy kind of way. Just stand near enough and before you know it, their joy has become your joy. It is a ‘joy’ to be in their presence and I always leave better for the encounter.

Have these people known no hardship or not been whacked by all the many thuds and thumps life can dish up? Are they oblivious to the world’s troubles? Have these people been spared the every day pain and the sorrow of loss? No. In fact, when I think of these people I can also begin to name the illnesses, the deaths, the losses and the meanness that has seemed to follow them. Their lives, like all of ours, has seen its share of sadness and despair.

The difference is that these people have not waited for joy to come knocking at their door. They chose it. They have chosen joy as a lifestyle and a way of walking in the world. It is a creative act, choosing joy. It is something that takes a certain lens for seeing the world full of possibility even when the calendar or the bank account or the morning newspaper would say otherwise.

Choosing joy, for me, is saying I am connected to something larger, something more, Mystery itself and therefore I will always have an anchor even in the most unmoored place. Those who chose joy see beauty and live in awe that they are alive at all. That they get to see the sun rise and set once again and declare that miracle enough. 

I don’t believe that joy is the same thing as happiness. Being happy has so many variables. So many things can happen in any given day that can threaten my happiness…the weather, a bad lunch, a mean word spoken in my direction, a sense of failure…too many to mention. The Buddha said: “We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.” 

The shadow of joy is one I want to stand in. How about you? There will always be worries and hardship. It is the way of the world. But to choose joy…now there’s a life I can commit to. Today’s word for Lent is ‘joy’ and I choose it.