#10 Happy Birthday to the Gods of Joy 2020

Holy Days of the Lady’s Year for Joy

December 27-31

We have miraculously arrived at the end of a wild ride – through the extremes of joy and sorrow carried on the winds of 2020. For the year’s fierce (though sometimes tender) teachings, I give thanks. May I understand, embrace, and metabolize these teachings in ways that help bring new life and new light on the path toward a safe, just, happy world.

The last full month of the Joy calendar, the Month of Service and Sharing, closes on December 26, leaving five days before the beginning of a new year and the month of Joyful Sourcing on January 1. Taking a cue from the ancient, so wise Egyptians, who had the same dilemma during their holy year, we celebrate birthdays of five divine ones during this time.

The great feminine power, whom I call The Lady, taught me an easy way to remember these five gods of Joy: “Use your fingers and thumb!   Remember what you have learned about the meaning of each.”

Thus, the thumb, that opposable appendage that in some ways helps to differentiate us from our near cousins, carries the power and reminder of the Joy of Being Human. Therefore, the gods who take Joy in Humanity are born on December 27. They are joined by sisters and brother gods of the Joy of honoring Directionality in our lives (the pointer finger and December 28); the gods of the Joy of Passion (the middle finger and December 29); the gods of the Joy of Beauty (the fourth finger and December 30); the Gods of Soul and Spirit (the little finger and December 31).

Five Holy Days. Five Holy Celebrations of Joyful Gods.

An Imaginary Journey

As the gates begin to close on this momentous year, I invite you to envision a magical and timeless space, an inner temple, located perhaps in the center of your chest, near your heart, that heart that is itself a vast and elegant temple of time and eternity. Within the temple are five domains, each with its own altar, its own elements, its own music, its own sense of presence.

These domains represent all the ways you can imagine celebrating – in the very center of your Being – with abandon and total delight the birthdays of these five joyful gods:

Humanity; Direction; Passion; Beauty; Soul and Spirit.  

And through this process may they be born again in you and take their happy places in every corner of the world. Happy Holy Days.

Special Announcement for the Five Holy Birthdays

Throughout this tumultuous year, the artist and poet Patti Kaufman has used her gifts to express the hopes and fears, challenges and possibilities of our time.  Five of those expressions demonstrate an aspect of the five divine and joyous attributes which I imagine being born and reborn, one on each of the five days outside our Calendar Year for Joy.

You will receive one of these works of art on each of the Five Days beginning December 27, as our month for Joyful Service and Sharing closes, and just before the year turns again to January 1, and a month for remembering and celebrating Sources and Resources for Joy.  

Praise. Praise. Praise.

Joy in the World. And in me.