THE SONG OF OUR BELONGING
I saw her standing there amid the flowers, basking
in their beauty, utterly lost in a moment of joy. She didn't know
I saw her talk to them. She didn't know I heard her laugh. I marveled
at her delight. It was so natural, so pure.
Watching that little child made me wonder if we
really know how to be comfortable with joy. I don't know if you've
been giving much thought to this lately, but I have, and it prompts
me to ask - what do you do when joy comes into your life? Are you
able to let go and enter into it completely, or do you hold back
and keep a portion of yourself in some "safe place," so
as not to invest too much in it? Take a deep look inside, and ask
yourself if you really can throw all restraint away. Can you drink
the cup completely? Can you give yourself without measure, basking
in the beauty of the moment? Can you allow yourself to move through
its rhythm, to feel its pulse? Can you let joy oil the wheels of
your life, and then go where it wants to take you, asking no questions
at all? I dare say most of us have seldom known such freedom, and
yet there are few moments that compare with swimming in joy's boisterous
current.
Joy likes to surprise us and sweep us away on
its swift tide. Then there are those other times when small joys
pop up like daisies in the field, leaving splotches of happy color
on the hillsides of our days.
Small joys hoist our spirit up and keep it from
flagging when the going gets rough. How do you feel when you see
a rainbow, or when the moon breaks through the clouds, or when a
little child you do not even know breaks into a radiant smile just
at the sight of you? Does it make your heart sing? Are your steps
a little lighter? Does your day seem a bit more holy? Small joys
prompt us to sing, whether the sun is shining or not. Small joys
cultivate a taste for the larger moments. They give us the courage
to ride those unexpected peaks when they come bursting into our
lives.
So often we postpone our joy, hinging it to our
secret longings. When we do, we relegate joy to the future, but
joy does not happen in the future. Joy is a present moment experience.
Totally.
You see, joy doesn't happen to us. Joy happens
within us, and that means joy can be ours any time, anywhere. The
reason is simple - joy is an act of recognition, of finding delight
in both the ordinary and the divine. Even the smallest things can
be reason for joy. Oriah Mountain Dreamer(1) knows this. She says
it so well: "I have learned that the ecstasy of mango juice
on my tongue and union with Spirit are not as different as I once
thought."
Yes, ordinary moments remind us over and over
that life is more than it seems. The infinite is always peeking
through the facade of our daily life, reminding us that joy is our
true nature. It is our raison d'etre, our inescapable purpose, and
it will not let us go until we find it.
Even though it may seem so, joy is never really
lost. Too often we look the other way, but always joy is here waiting
for us, patiently waiting. Along the way we may have to look deep
inside before we can claim joy for our own, once and for all. If
that is so, the journey will have been worth it.
In the process, we become a bit more authentic.
We begin to be. I'm not talking about being this, or being that.
I'm talking about just be-ing, and what we are in those moments
is much closer to who we really are than anything we ever thought
we were. When we begin to experience our inner truth, a new way
of seeing and being opens up. Out of such sacred moments a new sense
of Self is born, a Self that somehow seems to encompass the universe,
while still remaining within it. Boundaries simply vanish like mist
before the morning sun. Suddenly the horizon seems broader, the
vision clearer, the love a bit deeper. We may not
be There yet, but we have come a little closer,
and in our heart we know it.
It takes balance to walk the fine line between
life's polarities and not be overcome by their magnetism. Learning
to find harmony and peace in the midst of life's vicissitudes teaches
us that we are both the pain and the healing. We are the love and
the loving, the life and the living of that life. We wonder why
we could not have seen this before, and yet somehow it does not
matter. The truth is. We are in it, and we are of it. Somehow, our
momentary glimpse seems enough for now.
So much of the time we long for the curtains to
part so the mystery can be revealed, yet we are the mystery. We
are the mirror, the image in the mirror, and the one who is looking
in it.(2) Still, we do not know, but one day we shall know. One
day we shall awaken, and when we do, the knowing will be sufficient
in itself.
It must be this kind of knowing that occurs when
moments of joy - large or small - touch our life. Joy is timeless,
its nature infinite. That is what we are, too. We are joy's by-way,
a path for it to travel on, a prism through which it can shine.
Joy can never be fully defined, yet we have the capacity to contain
it, and yes, to merge with it when we touch upon that high and holy
place within us where joy abides. Such moments remind us that anything
less is not worthy of one who can encompass such vastness, one who
can consciously choose to embrace the mystery, whether that mystery
is understood or not.
That's really what being a vessel is all about,
don't you agree? A vessel just waits to be filled. It is open, receptive,
unbiased, unprejudiced. It does not judge, nor does it condemn.
It accepts fully and completely. Such openness, such clarity of
purpose frees us to embrace the high and the low, the easy and the
difficult, knowing that what Is, is beyond all this, is more than
this, and so are we.
In our depths we already know this to be true,
for our heart harbors joys that only the soul can know, and they
long to ring out like echoes from some distant canyon within us.
This is the song of our belonging, and it dwells within each one
of us. When we drink from waters such as these, it is easier to
accept our frailties with a greater sense of grace. Now we know
that our "inadequacies" are not who we really are, for
we are not so much the one who stumbles upon the path - we are the
very path itself. We are not just one who thirsts - we are the very
stream itself. And yes, we are not just one who is groping in the
dark, for the light that reveals the way is within our very soul.
To see yourself in this context is to be stretched, but that is
what joy does. We long to be large enough to contain it all. We
extend ourselves just to be able to embrace it, and when we get
a sense of its largeness, we seek to grow that we may know more
of it.
Therein lies the grace of joy, for joy always
reminds us that there is yet more to life, more to love, even to
our very own being. Along the way, we may discover, just as Oriah
did, that what is imperfect can still be whole. In that imperfection,
and in that wholeness, lies the song of our belonging.
(1) The Invitation, by Oriah Mountain Dreamer, HarperSan Francisco
1999
(2) This reflects the Persian poet, Rumi, as translated by Deepak
Chopra.
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