Ingrid Goff-Maidoff
From the category archives:
“Wisdom is the art of living
in rhythm with your soul, your life,
and with the Divine….Wisdom is
the way you learn to decipher
the unknown which is our
closest companion.”
~John O’Donohue, in an interview with
Krista Tippet, Speaking of Faith
“After you jump and
before you land
is God.”
~Gabrielle Roth, Maps To Ecstasy
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“Earthly things must be known to be loved;
Divine things must be loved to be known.”
~Blaise Pascal
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When exploring Grace for my little book, The Abundance of Grace, I came across many inspiring passages which I interspersed with my own reflections. Here are a few, simply to remind us that every breath is itself a grace.
Grace is the door
to the peace beyond the mind.
~Rumi
Grace is unity,
oneness with ourselves,
oneness with God.
-Thomas Merton
Grace, brothers,
makes no conditions and singles out
none of us in particular;
grace takes us all to its bosom
and proclaims general amnesty.
~Isaak Dineson
Grace waits nearby
to flood the heart with light.
It is up to us to
open the heart’s windows,
unlock the door,
and make an altar there for the spirit…
~Ingrid Goff-Maidoff
For more selections from the book, here is a link to an article of excerpts called Reflections on Grace.
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E.B. White said, “I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.” Do you have similar desires tugging at you every morning? I desire simplicity AND celebration; working with passion AND time with my family; to give And to receive. Although I am not convinced I can improve the world, I do want to pour forth blessings, beauty, and love into it, and I want to continue to determine how to keep my own burden upon it small.
Sometimes I find a halting duality in my desires, when I fall into either/or thinking: improve OR enjoy, simplicity OR celebration, work OR play. Then it is hard to plan the day. I am saved often by the reminder of Both/And. I may both work and play, both improve and enjoy, both give and receive.
I offer these quotations from my Happiness book of quotations, published by Andrews McMeel, coupled with these friendly pictures of a goat at North Tabor Farm. I love goats. I love their full embodiment of humility and playfulness, enthusiasm and curiosity. They do not seem torn between the desires to improve or enjoy- they simply enjoy.
Live in each season as it passes;
breathe the air,
drink the drink,
taste the fruit.
~Henry David Thoreau
Mix a little foolishness
in with your serious plans.
It is lovely to be silly at the right moment.
~Horace
The burden of self is lightened
when I laugh at myself.
~Rabindranath Tagore
The car has broken down,
my love is far away.
My bones feel weary,
and my mind is tired.
Still, I can say with joy
that happiness remains.
~Ingrid Goff-Maidoff
Dwell as near as possible
to the channel in which your life flows.
~Henry David Thoreau
It is the simple things in life that make living worthwhile,
the sweet fundamental things
such as love and duty, work and rest, and
living close to nature. ~Laura Ingalls Wilder
The Infinite Goodness has such wide arms,
it takes everyone that turns to it.
~Dante
Such blessings we receive,
such gifts of grace!
If we have wandered
from the path of gladness,
point us back to Life!
~Ingrid Goff-Maidoff
The journey is the reward.
~Chinese Proverb
If only we’d stop trying to be happy~
we’d have a pretty good time.
~Edith Wharton
Be happy. It’s one way of being wise.
~Colette
The big question is whether you are going to be able
to say a hearty “yes!” to your adventure.
~Joseph Campbell
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The very purpose of our lives
is happiness and joyfulness.
That is very clear.
~Dalai Lama
On Tuesday, June 2nd, I will be a guest at Jan Lundy’s blog, Awake Is Good. I will be there all day to explore joy- to have a conversation with you. Please stop by. At the end of the day, Jan will give away a copy of my Joy Book, as well as a bunch of my other inspirational offerings. I will open our conversation Tuesday with this article.
I love words. I love to get down into them, coaxing them from a tight bud into an open flower, revealing multiple petals fragrant with meaning. And I love to make connections between wisdom traditions, listening for what others have said throughout time and around the world. This has become a kind of path for me, and it is the way in which I have been exploring Joy for many years. While I don’t know everything there is to know about Joy, I have sought the world’s wisdom, sat with it fondly, and welcomed Joy to take up residence in my thoughts and in my heart. For me, Joy will always be a kind of personal opening, or a journey - an intimate exploration into life and a sense of love and belonging.
In my exploration of Joy, I found that we all have various ideas about what it means. Some of us have even developed an aversion for the word, so I was eager to move beyond a bud-like understanding and open it up to a fuller flower. I also discovered that many dictionaries offer a rather superficial definition: the anticipation of something one wants or desires. Yet I had a strong inkling that Joy was not merely the result of something as fleeting as wants and desires, accomplishment or acquisition, (and not even simply the exuberant rush of good feelings) but more to do with a sustained intimacy with the eternal, spiritual dimension of our lives -a dimension which is sometimes forgotten or ignored in the fret and hurry of our culture today.
In fact, the more I explored Joy, unfolded and opened joy, the more it dawned on me, and I had to ask: what if Joy was this spiritual dimension as well as our relationship to it? What if joy was our essence: joy, love, innocence, harmony and wisdom? What if joyfulness came from this spiritual understanding? And what if we have forgotten this and are instead living with a mistaken and impoverished identity?
I soon began collecting a mass of quotes to support my theory. Here are just a few of my favorites:
Joy is the realization
of the truth of our oneness,
The oneness of our soul with the world,
and of the world-soul
with supreme Love.
~Rabindranath Tagore
From Joy I came.
For Joy I live.
And in Sacred Joy
I shall melt again.
~Yogananda
You are seeking joy and peace
in far off places,
but the spring of joy is in your heart.
The haven of peace is in yourself.
~Sai Baba
I have spoken these things to you
That my joy may remain in you,
And that your joy may remain full.
~John 15:11
As essential and ubiquitous as air,
the presence of Joy is boundless, eternal,
without beginning, without end, spacious, ever-new,
ever-flowing, growth, the expanding universe,
infinite energy, bliss emptiness,
the fragrance of a marigold,
the free fluttering of wings…
(ok- I wrote that one.)
This exploration alone landed me in a profound state of Joy. I found that Joy emanates and is in fact suffused with a much deeper meaning than the one in my dictionary. Eventually I, with humility and boldness, penned a new definition for Joy.
1: An abiding and profound sense
of love and belonging.
2: A deep passionate awareness
of the very act and art of living.
3: A sacred happiness. 4: An intimate trust.
5: A vibration. 6: An inner smile.
7:A Divine Current flowing through us
and into the world.
My next question was: How do we return to the presence and practice of joy? What I am learning is this: To arrive at this Joy, we each find our own personal ways to tune into it, tend to it, and infuse our lives with it. When we live from a place of intimacy with life, we live with an awareness of love and belonging; we feel held, energized, and at home in the world. There are as many ways to cultivate this intimacy as there are people - some of us practice meditation, yoga, walking in nature; some attend churches, temples and synagogues; some write, some cook, some play the kazoo, some run, others hold each other. I say it isn’t either this or that- it’s all of it, all of it. Lighting a candle, enjoying the fragrance of a flower, contemplative reading, creating art, listening to birdsong or music, singing - even just breathing deeply - there are tens of thousands of ways to land ourselves in Joy.
What are some of yours?
Take this
fanciful Joy.
Let it bloom
Inside you
like an orchid.
Let it open you
like a window.
Let it lift you up
to ride the wind.
Oh, Beautiful Soul,
pitch your tent
in this field of joy
and adventure out
from there…
~Ingrid
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Words that enlighten the soul
are more precious than jewels.
~ Hazrat Inayat Khan
I have a gift for you, or perhaps for a friend or loved one: I have put the quotations from my gift book Courage, a book of comfort for trying times, up as an article on my website. In reality, each page of the small book contains one or two quotes. Here I have broken them up with photographs to create something beautiful and I hope not too overwhelming. I love finding words of inspiration and encouragement, and I’m certain you will find one or two (or fifty or sixty) passages here that will serve you well.
Here is the link to the article.
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Today I am rejoicing in fragrance. In the studio, lilies fill the air with heady sweetness. In the kitchen, the orange tree is in bloom, and the jasmine. Last night, my nose stayed awake to the fragrance of Easter Lilies.
The other day my daughter Rose flitted from Easter Lily to Orange blossoms , expressing giddy intoxication and delight and fullness and joy. She swept up her skirt and did a little dance. “Who needs drugs with natural intoxicants like these?” she asked. I jumped at the chance to mention that God, too, is an intoxicant. Today I am lightheaded, each breath a kind of bliss. This is from the fragrance, I know, but also from a beautiful walk I had this morning.
There were ominous clouds ahead, but I headed out anyway. I have been been savoring these words of Saint Teresa of Avila, “Just these two words He spoke changed my life, ‘Enjoy Me.’” And I have been sensing of late that there is nowhere that God is not. God is in the fragrance of the flowers, in the Stone beneath the Holly Tree that invited me to pause for stillness- to rest in a pocket of eternity. God is in the Cypress tree that stands bold like a flame in the field nearby. God is in the water, the cakes, the young woman I meet at the cafe. I believe that Teresa of Avila also said that prayer was being on terms of friendship with God. I have been feeling this friendship of late- with God, with life, and also with myself. The Buddhist Teacher Pema Chodron teaches that Maitri is being a friend to yourself; being able to relax with yourself, and that it is the basis of compassion, and a seed of happiness and well being. This week I am feeling that.
(If the word ‘God’ is troubling for you, I hope you can find it in your heart to substitute a deeper meaning: Infinite Love, The Divine, Spirit, The Energy of Life. Sometimes I use the words Friend, Beloved, even Home. Try as I may, I always come back to God.)
I hope you, dear friends, are enjoying such friendship as well: with Life, with yourself, with those you meet. And I wish you every Joy in the coming days.
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“Spirituality means love in action.
It means enjoying our spiritual riches and sharing them with all we meet.
We can learn to balance our spiritual practices with our worldly responsibilities,
enjoying the fruits within ourselves and sharing our gifts with humanity.”
~ Empowering Your Soul Through Meditationby Rajinder Singh
Today I am feeling very grateful for my work in this world, which is the work of sharing. And I am feeling grateful for this website and this online community. We all have our own ways of putting our love into action- what are some of yours?
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Men are convertible.
They want awakening.
Get the soul out of bed,
out of her deep habitual sleep,
out into God’s universe.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
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