#7 Joy in the World 2020 Remembrance

Joy in the World

The Month for Joyful Remembrance

August 29 to October 7, 2020

We shake with joy, we shake with grief.

What a time they have, these two

housed as they are in the same body.

—Mary Oliver

These forty days that mark a retreat of summer in the Northern Hemisphere – and what a summer it has been! – bringing a profoundly felt shift to our lives. We pause as the light changes, that magic day when the sky takes on a deeper blue, signaling that it’s time to pay deep attention to all those things that are changing now, before our very eyes. We’re turning, we’re turning, almost it becomes possible to feel the turning. We are being escorted into the time of Remembering Joy in the same moments that we feel the spin into autumn, the season of multitudes of change.

We have been shaken this year – so many challenges, such heartbreak, such courage, such fear, such fortitude – feeling so besieged, inundated, overcome, that it seems difficult to remember joy. Yet choosing joy is one powerful way through all our sorrow and pain and fear. As the great teacher says, “It is not a matter of faith; it is a matter of practice.” Remembering joy in vivid detail, writing about it, sharing it with others, drawing its images helps keep us clear, focused and alive. And more capable of serving this beleaguered world community with grace and humor and humility.

There is Joy in the World. Ready to be remembered, celebrated, praised. No matter what else is happening.

Joy Joy Joy

Praise Praise Praise