#5 Joyful Presence 2018

Practicing Joy in the World

June 10 – July 19

“I sit on the black
stool,
then open my book
to a world of music.

Black notes fill the page
like a road
map to tell me
where to put my
fingers.”

The poet, musician, dancer Phoebe Brown eloquently describes her sense of Joyful Presence. It is an all-pervading sense of sweetness, aliveness, promise, and something, as she says, you can fall into, and live within.

In this poem she has found it in her music.

My Music.

It makes me feel
Like the piano is
Singing.

I feel joyful.

My Music.

Every note
with a sweet sound.

I have fallen
into my music.

Perfect,
Peaceful,
like the hum of birds.

My Music.

Inspired by the poet’s experience, the invitation for practicing joy this month is to listen for and find the music in the elements and in our minds and bodies. In the Northern Hemisphere, during these forty days containing summer’s opening moments and then the settling-in weeks, the sun’s embrace plays over the earth and its living beings as if it were music, and we its instruments. The mystery is that when we the instruments expand into the Joyful Presence of the sun’s music, we too become music.

Again we pay attention to the elements around us and then relate them to their correspondences within.

Earth: our bodies
Water: our blood and bodily fluids
Fire: our bodies’ warmth
Air: our breath
Space: our consciousness

Practicing the Presence of Joy as music coming from the summer sun, we attune to its different notes, rhythms and songs of joy, and enrich ourselves by responding with our own music.

Examples:

Earth

The dawn music coming from the sun singing its wake up melody streams into the bedroom window brightening the shades and pouring over my sleeping body. Before I’m fully awake, the sun song touches my skin and reminds me of a Presence of warm joy. I can then make my stumbling morning journeys to the bathroom, the kitchen, the garden, the birds, the cats, the lingering deer and feel it as music, clumsy music, but still music, my response to the grace of the living Presence that is the summer sun.

Water

The music continues as my shower’s pelting water reminds of the immeasurably luxurious gift of hot running water, making me sing for joy. There is music too in the sound the water makes, and joy in the refreshment it provides to all the waters of my body. From outside to inside, the presence of joy. And from inside to outside, the presence of joy. And all of it music.

Fire

The noonday sun beats down a rhythm, offering the world a shout out, a phrase that announces how close it has become; we, the earth chorus, respond, singing back with all our voices, each unique, each growing warmer with the presence of joy in response to the hot music of the sun. Our bodies offer a call and respond chant to the sun’s music: heat up, cool off, heat up, cool off. We can appreciate these bodily miracles as music, and as a living example of Joyful Presence.

Air

The evening sun paints the clouds in music and color; the air glows and changes in the same rhythmic pattern as our bodies: heat up, cool off. The breezes sweeten the song as they feel the colors shift, and the sun’s songs give way to nightsong. Still its presence is experienced as joy in the world, joy moving, joy making music, then sun joy surrendering to another kind for dreaming. We breathe the song, the singing, and become the music.

Joy in the World. And in me.

Buy the new calendar:

The Lady’s Year for Joy

The Lady’s Year for Joy is your personal guide and journal as you seek, focus, explore, test, recognize, experience, embrace, offer, and report
the truth of Joy in the world.

For you and for gifting your friends — this new calendar will enrich your daily reflections.

$25.00 plus shipping


Buy Now Button with Credit Cards

Join the Daily Poets via Telephone

In 2010, several members of Jean Houston’s West Coast Mystery School joined to support one another with a daily phone call to ponder the inspirational writings collected by Peggy Rubin. All are welcome to join the calls. For those who wish to join the call at 9 am Pacific time the number is 1-641-715-3272, code 884124#. Read more about them HERE.

Sign Up to Receive Peggy’s Posts on Practicing Joy in the World via Email:

See page top right.