#4 Joy in the World 2020 Acceptance & Acknowledgement

The Month for Accepting and Acknowledging Joy

May 1 – June 9, 2020

God courts us with the beauty of the world…

—Hafiz

These forty days in the height of the colorful year, northern or southern hemisphere, invite us to settle in — in fact to set up housekeeping – in the realms of joy. No matter what.

In the years since this path for joy was first given to me, I have sometimes questioned the first verb of this month’s title, acceptance: Too tame! I declare to the wisdom within. I want this month to be about bathing in joy, imbibing joy, becoming saturated, even drunk with joy. This is the time for going wild with all the world’s beauty surrounding us.

But no, the Wisdom One says, this is the month for being gently established in joy. This is the month for deepening so tenderly into awareness of joy that we cannot deny its presence. It bathes us, yes – and we drink it like spring water – so that we become totally refreshed, but so naturally, so easily. We cannot deny Joy’s beingness all around us.

So this is a gentle month – especially with the uncertainty and vast cloud of unknowing that we’re living in and through. A gentle month, time for being gentle with ourselves, and all our surroundings, allowing of course occasional ecstasies when the dogwood appears one early morning fully clothed in joy, or the lilac rushes its intoxicating sweet breath toward us in a sudden unexpected wave.

This is the month for letting joy grow and blossom – as the plants are growing and blooming, richly, richly, until we are suffused with its delicate mystery. Joy is a substance, potent as air, part of the air.

“Established in joy, perform action,” to paraphrase the God Vishnu in the Bhaghavad Gita. And the action we take from this establishment in joy is acknowledging the joy, especially the details and particulars of what has brought us joy. We manage this by physical expressions of gratitude, through our eyes, voice, hands, and hearts.

This is the way joy grows, the way we can participate in growing joy. Taking it in, feeling its suffusing sweetness, and then acknowledging what has been given and received. Through the words: Thank you! Thank you! And if we want to enhance the joy even more, we can contemplate adding words of praise.

Joy in the World

Praise Praise Praise