#1 Sourcing Joy 2024

Joy in the World 2024
The Month of Sourcing in Joy
January 1 – February 9
Happy New Year

I wrote the words below four years ago, and find them refreshingly appropriate, and accurate for this month of discovering and recovering sources of joy everywhere in this opening time of a new year. I’m pondering all we have survived through these past 36 months, and wishing to embrace with resilience and delight whatever is to come.

One of my “almost always” responses to a question asked of my own inner guidance and wisdom is this:

“Begin Again”

So:
Welcome to 2024, and this first month of a new journey through The Lady’s Year for Joy. These forty days invite us to plunge into ever- deepening experiences of those elements of life that keep us sweetly fed and nourished in joy.

Attending to the Elements: exploring the wild joy bubbling through them

These forty days are divided into four ten-day weeks, exploring the sources of ebullient joy found in each of the four elements. And experiencing them as enriching our individual lives and all our actions. We begin each month with ten days devoted to Earth, followed by Water, then Fire, then Air. Through them each is the all-pervading spiritual element of spaciousness.

An ever-renewing source of energy

This year I invite us all to amplify our experience of discovering joy by adding the element of Praise. At a workshop (in the fall of 2019) a wise participant spoke of, and then demonstrated through his writing, “Praise as a Spiritual Practice.”

Giving thanks provides an opening for Praise

That caught fire in my heart, as I consider praise as a form of adding delight to our practice of gratitude. For example, on this late December morning, I say, “Thank you, Dear Earth, for welcoming so tenderly the gently falling mother rain making the bamboo leaves dance and the bare branches of the maple tree tremble with delight.”

Increasing the Joy

Then I add to the experience of sharing that rain and the earth’s welcome into my own body and spirit, and enrich that experience of joyful gratitude by offering praise. Praise to the Earth for her joy in receiving the gentle rain; praise to the trees and plants for their rejoicing in the moisture, especially those tiny branches that catch the raindrops and turn them to rainbows; praise to the neighbors out walking on this beautiful Earth with their prancing dogs; praise to my delight in witnessing all of these wonders. Praise Praise Praise.

Thank you

Praise to you for reading these words, to your eyes that see, for your heart that acknowledges. Praise to all those millions of beings who add to the joy of the world, and express joy in the world.

Praise to Joy.