#9 Joy in the World 2020 Service & Sharing

Joy in the World
The Month for Joyful Service and Sharing
November 17 – December 26, 2020

Our lives are not our own. From womb
to tomb, we are bound to others.
Past and present, and by each crime
and every kindness, we birth our future.

–David Mitchell, British prize-winning novelist, screenwriter, librettist

Once upon a summer time, in a country far, far away, a group was called to honor and study Sophia, the magnificent feminine wisdom figure, presiding over much Western mythic imagining and faith. The learned philosophers provided worthy discussions, demonstrations, and revelations. And then one warm afternoon a woman stood before the enraptured listeners and opened a new conversation with these words,

“The Healing Field of Sophia”

The woman was Cheryl Sanders-Sardello. With those words she changed and charged the very air in the room.

Those words have been haunting me since the USA election, and the many times the President Elect and others have spoken about the need for healing. Healing not only from what another wise woman called a near-death experience for our democracy, but also from the fierce and devastating remains of our country’s 400 plus years of unacknowledged and unassuaged forces accurately described by the Buddha 2500 hundred years ago as “the fires of greed, hatred and delusion.”

In these forty days of Joyful Service and Sharing, we have the opportunity to begin a process which will take the rest of our lives: opening ourselves to the Healing Field of Sophia, enhancing our experience of it with images of joy, hope, and fulfillment, and following where we are then led in order to participate in the healing of ourselves, our relationships to fellow citizens and residents of this country–human and otherwise–and to our Holy Earth.

And you know what? Just opening ourselves to the Healing Field of who or whatever you love and serve, causes the task ahead to become one of relief, possibility, and profound joy. As David Mitchell says, we are creating the future by every action, and that includes every thought, every intention, every desire. That idea reminds us of how to live, and that reminder creates a sense of great freedom. And great joy.

As the transcendent Emily Dickinson declares:

If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.

Praise. Praise. Praise
Joy in the World
And in me.