For half-an-hour he writes words upon a scrap of paper….
words in which the soul’s blood pours out,
like the body’s blood from a wound.
He writes secretly this mad diary,
all his passion and longing,
his dark and dreadful gratitude to God,
his idle allegories, the tales that tell themselves in his head;
the joy that comes on him sometimes (he cannot help it)
at the sacred intoxication of existence…
~G.K. Chesterton in a letter to his fiancé
When I was six or seven years old, I used to take a precious penny of my own and hide it for someone else to find. It was a curious compulsion; sadly, I’ve never been seized by it since. For some reason I always “hid” the penny along the same stretch of sidewalk up the street. I would cradle it at the roots of a sycamore, say, or in a hole left by a chipped-off piece of sidewalk.
Then I would take a piece of chalk, and, starting at either end of the block, draw huge arrows leading up to the penny from both directions. After I learned to write I labeled the arrows: SURPRISE AHEAD or MONEY THIS WAY. I was greatly excited, during all this arrow-drawing, at the thought of the first lucky passer-by who would receive in this way, regardless of merit, a free gift from the universe. But I never lurked about. I would go straight home and not give the matter another thought, until, some months later, I would be gripped again by the impulse to hide another penny.
The world is fairly studded and strewn with pennies cast broadside from a generous hand. But — and this is the point — who gets excited by a mere penny?
It is dire poverty indeed when a man is so malnourished and fatigued that he won’t stoop to pick up a penny. But if you cultivate a healthy poverty and simplicity, so that finding a penny will literally make your day, then, since the world is in fact planted in pennies, you have with your poverty bought a lifetime of days.
It is that simple.
~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Because the world is full of ugly things, we need the Sabbath to feed our soul with beauty.
~Tim Keller
I just can’t help the joy of simply being alive.
I can grouse with the best of them about the state of the world and our country’s current political mess and you name it…
I know better than to grumble. I’ve seen where negative thoughts lead and I can feel them aching in my bones when I steep myself in it. The sky is grayer, the clouds are thicker, the night is darker–on and on to its overwhelming suffocating conclusion.
I don’t ever want to feel so impoverished that finding a penny or admiring a flower doesn’t make my day better.
I have the privilege to choose joy rather than bathe in the bleak. Some live with so much suffering, joy is out of reach – in Ukraine, in Gaza, in Sudan, in Myanmar, and elsewhere.
Like an opportunistic cat finding that one ray of sun in the darkness and melting into it, I can absorb and equip myself to become radiant as well.
I’m not putting on a “happy face” — instead joy adopts me, holds me close in the tough times and won’t abandon me. Though at times joy may dip temporarily behind a cloud and the rain will fall, I know the sun is there even when I can’t see or feel it.
Today, on this Sabbath, joy is mine to choose because joy has chosen me, this morning and every morning.
I just can’t help it.
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