In a world pocked by cynicism and pummeled by devastating news, to find joy for oneself and spark it in others, to find hope for oneself and spark it in others, is nothing less than a countercultural act of courage and resistance. This is not a matter of denying reality – it is a matter of discovering a parallel reality where joy and hope are equally valid ways of being. To live there is to live enchanted with the underlying wonder of reality, beneath the frightful stories we tell ourselves and are told about it.

—Maria Popova

What is there beyond knowing

What is there beyond knowing that keeps

calling to me? I can't

turn in any direction

but it's there. I don't mean

the leaves' grip and shine or even the thrush's

silk song, but the far-off

fires, for example,

of the stars, heaven's slowly turning

theater of light, or the wind

playful with its breath;

or time that's always rushing forward,

or standing still

in the same—what shall I say—

moment.

What I know

I could put into a pack

as if it were bread and cheese, and carry it

on one shoulder,

important and honorable, but so small!

While everything else continues, unexplained

and unexplainable.  How wonderful it is

to follow a thought quietly

to its logical end.

I have done this a few times.

But mostly I just stand in the dark field,

in the middle of the world, breathing

in and out. Life so far doesn't have any other name

but breath and light, wind and rain.

If there's a temple, I haven't found it yet.

I simply go on drifting, in the heaven of the grass 

    and the weeds. 

--Mary Oliver

 Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass on a summer day listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is hardly a waste of time.

- John Lubbock

The Ask

Among your duties, pleasure is a thing that also needs accomplishing.

            —Tony Hoagland, “The Word”

 Perhaps it looked like I was dancing,

but I was being danced, was being twirled

by some great mystical spinning wheel

turning the straw of my thoughts into gold.

What a gift to have a body, to be alive

on a night when the sun is warm

and the grass is green and the mountains

are not yet tinder dry and the music is joyful

and the minutes slip through the hours

like page after page of happily ever

and there is no imp to be seen, just

the glory of brass shining in the air

and the miracle of hands clapping

as if applause is the only response that makes sense,

and the only thing the world asks of me

is to love it.

-- Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Joy

The asters shake from stem to flower

waiting for the monarchs to alight.

Every butterfly knows that the end

is different from the beginning

and that it is always a part

of a longer story, in which we are always

transformed. When it's time to fly,

you know how, just the way you knew

how to breathe, just the way the air

knew to find its way into your lungs,

the way the geese know when to depart,

the way their wings know how to

speak to the wind, a partnership of feather

and glide, lifting into the blue dream.

-- Stuart Kestenbaum

 This universe is much too big to hold onto, but it is the perfect size for letting go.

--Sharon Salzberg

The Runes

In city, in suburb, in forest, no way to stretch out the

arms — so if you would grow, go straight up or deep down.

-Denise Levertov

 Bad times, hard times – this is what people keep saying; but let us live well, and times shall be good. We are the times: such as we are, such are the times....You are hoping for the good; be what you hope for.

--St Augustine of Hippo

We will never be the same again.

But here’s a little secret for you: no one is ever the same thing again after anything. You are never the same twice, and much of your unhappiness comes from trying to pretend that you are. Accept that you are different each day, and do so joyfully, recognizing it for the gift it is. Work within the desires and goals of the person you are currently, until you aren’t that person anymore, and everything changes once again.

"Welcome to Night Vale"

The person who's in love with their vision of community will destroy community. But the person who loves the people around them will create community everywhere they go.

--Dietrich Bonhoeffer