#1 Sourcing in Joy 2020

Joy in the World 2020

The Month of Sourcing in Joy

January 1 – February 9

Happy New Year

Begin Again

Welcome to 2020, 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, the Air. Through them each 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 recent workshop, 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.

A Practice

Enhancing your joy by offering praise to the sources of your joy, fully sensing that joy pervading your body and your life, now give it away. May all beings everywhere experience this kind of joy in their own way and in their own time. All beings. Everywhere.