Category Archives: Blogging from A to Z April Challenge

J is for Joy

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Joy

  1. A feeling of great pleasure and happiness.
  2. A thing that causes joy.

Bliss, cheer, comfort, delight, glee, satisfaction, wonder. For me, joy is one part happiness, one part relaxation, one part energy, one part love, and three parts dog.

Obi taught me how to smile, to make friends and love everyone, and that there is power and strength in joy.

Dexter is teaching me how to relax, let go, roll around in the grass, play, open myself to joy, and expect every moment to contain it.

Sam is teaching me the full measure of joy, the exuberant celebration, enthusiastic welcoming, energetic embrace, the embodiment and experience of joy.

All three of my boys, including their “Dad” have taught me the joy of love, family, acceptance, and belonging.

What does joy mean to you, dear reader? Where do you find it? Who is teaching you about it? Or are you teaching someone else?

I is for Inspiration

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Inspiration

  • The process of being mentally stimulated to do or feel something, especially to do something creative; arousal of the mind, the heart and the brain, to special, unusual activity or creativity
  • The quality of having been so stimulated, or the product of creative thinking and work; a sudden brilliant, creative, or timely idea; divine influence or guidance, intuition; a person or thing that stimulates in this way, an inspiring or animating action or influence
  • The drawing in of breath, the act of breathing, bringing in air; inhalation

I see something beautiful, confusing, alive, and it causes me to pause, breathe in, and look closely. In the moment before any judgement or understanding, it touches my heart, and my heart in turn opens to it. In the stillness of this moment, something swells. My chest feels full of wind, energy and fresh air, and I want to reach out, touch, connect. This longing hurts. In the purest moment of devotion, I make an offering, a wish, a prayer.

What inspired me today:

  • Lilacs on my writing desk. Tiny flowers, big smell.

  • Spring morning bird songs. Two tiny sparrows roosting in my lilac bushes. The robin on the fence (it’s a female, I’ve learned) who insists on believing that my neighbor’s bathroom window is a viable place to roost (she’s been at this for a few weeks now)–this morning, she was throwing herself against it with a mouthful of grass for building her nest. I am inspired by her, so completely wrong and yet so utterly devoted.
  • Susan Piver, this post especially, and her reminder “that the true meaning of your practice arises when you do one thing and this one thing has way, way more power than trying your super-hardest best or willfully throwing yourself at the dharma—and that thing is this: RELAX.”
  • Music. Some of it came from my computer. Some of it came from the river, full and moving fast. Some of it came from the newly opened Aspen leaves whispering to the wind.
  • Susannah Conway. Today is the six year anniversary of her first blog post. I am inspired by everything about her, everything she does: her willingness to be vulnerable and brave, her wit and charm, her creativity, her writing, her photography, her videos and books, her ecourses and her blog.
  • One of the books I’m reading, “Steal Like an Artist” by Austin Kleon.

What is inspiring you today?