Entering the Book of Joy

Every spiritual tradition on earth claims for us a pure, unsullied “center,” a place undefiled by what has wounded us, betrayed us — even by the ways in which we have damaged ourselves.  The soul, the “nothing special,” the state of flow and reverie — this center goes by many names, and by none.  But we all have known this place, and know it, in our deepest moments of wisdom, as “home.”

A friend of mine recently shared with me a practice that she has adopted during the pandemic, a counterweight to the darkness and inwardness of this time — she calls it her “Book of Joy.”  I love this simple idea so much — so similar to my own daily practice of gathering “moments,” – that I share it here.

Each day, she records in a small notebook one thing that has kindled her “center,” her heart space and imagination.

Sometimes it is a brief anecdote, sometimes a few lines from a poem, sometimes a card she has received from a friend.

This friend has spent her life educating young people, and now spends her days learning the names and lineage of every tree in the world-famous park near her home.  In many ways, she reminds me of Miss Rumphius, the magical character in the children’s book by the same name.  Miss Rumphius was a librarian with a large soul and vast imagination.  Not only did this make her very good at what she did, but it enabled her to envision the many exotic journeys she eventually took herself on, all over the world.  But this wasn’t enough for her to feel that she had lived a complete life.  After she had retired and settled into a small cottage and endured a life-threatening illness (often in literature the metaphor for some inner death and transformation), she knew that her final work was this:  to make the world more beautiful.

To our enormous impoverishment, too often we forget beauty.  In this time of such radical diminishment of hope and possibility, especially, beauty has become a second-tier value.  A frill for when life “resumes.”

But what my friend reminds me is that beauty can save us, literally.  It can save our hearts and souls.  It can restore hope in harsh conditions.

Her Book of Joy practice reflects the wisdom that happiness, like love, is often a decision rather than a matter of luck.  It depends on our willingness to find value in the present, where we find ourselves, in our own lives.  Now.  To learn to love well what and who we are with.

Within this sort of happiness, there is a large helping of gratitude.  Despite all the we have lost, all that we might be suffering, all uncertainties about the future, there is still the cat curled on the sofa, the coffee in our mugs, footprints in the snow.  Witnessing these, however briefly we are able to some days, can lighten the dull aches and crushing losses long enough for our inner eye and its light to shine through.  And in shining, transform us, even just a little.

Yesterday I made a drive on back roads through western Maine.  After about 20 minutes, my husband and I had passed the string of small villages and passed into forests, and then expanses of farmland.  A recent snow remained pristine and thick on rolling hills and along stream beds on our route.

Suddenly, the landscape was alive with almost indescribable brilliance.  Each tree twig, branch, and trunk, each pine needle, had been gilded with a layer of sheer ice.  We drove mile after mile in this remarkable, exquisite landscape.  It was as if webs of diamonds and crystals had been shaped by some sorcery into trees, bushes, grasses, stretching as far as the eye could see.  I have lived many years, all of them in winter snow country, and have never seen such a breath-taking display.

It was enough and then some to bring me joy.   In this season of Lent that we more typically associate with denial and renunciation, the trees had a very different message for me.  Wake up, they called.  See the beauty.  Feel the joy.

What a lovely Lenten practice to consider – a “book” (or a daily photo, or a walk, or a dream journal) dedicated to the thing we need more of these days:  Joy.

Namaste.