Ingrid Goff-Maidoff
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I have a friend who came to see me,
who danced naked under the stars.
She brought a friend who is now my friend,
and who laughed with ease and joy.
Sweet unity.
This is what we had.
Today my heart is full
of moonlight and sunlight and dancing.
Today my life is brimming
with laughter and ease, and stars.
~Ingrid
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There is a lotus on our fishpond. In the morning, it opens its petals to drink in the sun. In the evening, it folds its petals in again, like hands in prayer.
This has helped me to consider the naturalness of my own rythms- how I open my petals sometimes, and how I fold them in when it is time to rest.
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Rose and I visited Blackwater Pond the other day. The water lilies were magnificent. The pond stretched out with such peaceful being, and birds poured out their music. We are so grateful to the Martha’s Vineyard Landbank for preserving pockets of beauty throughout the island for all of us to enjoy.
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Beloved is one of my names for the divine spacious presence I carry in my heart and whose eternal and infinite presence holds me also. I’ve glimpsed my Beloved, and often. And forgotten my Beloved as often as not. It is a strange dream, this living. A strange dream and a holy pursuit- full of beauty, love, longing and belonging. What I long for is this: The joy of awakening over and again to find myself in the arms of the day; to awaken and say, “Hello my Beloved. Hello my Beloved which is everywhere.” ~Ingrid, From The Joy Book
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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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Lately I have been asking myself, “to live quietly, and in love - is that enough?” I think, for me, that it may be. The more I settle into living quietly and in love, and determine that indeed it is enough- the more happy, content, peaceful I feel. Living quietly and in love I may be a poet, wife, mother, artist, lover of the spiritual life, gardener, tinkerer, sheet changer, dish washer, errander, generous friend - “Living quietly and in Love” seems to create an envelope of grace around all I do, feel, and am throughout the day. It is like finding permission to breathe, and to give one’s heart to every moment. - less striving, less argument.
This morning I caught the fragrance of the lilacs while taking out the compost to the bin- lilacs we dreamed and planted years ago which are finally blooming now. On Saturday Jonah and I transplanted the strawberries, and I imagined Bella enjoying their sweetness. As we survey our fruit trees, we see that there will be pears and apricots in addition to the apples, raspberries, and peaches.
All that we have planted is growing, stretching down roots into the soil, branches reaching up to the sky, drawing the heavens down…
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Visiting the castle (tower) was magnificent. Every window had a view. Perhaps there will be a festival there one day, with costumes, music, food…
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Ivan Granger posted this hopeful youtube offering at Poetry Chaikhana earlier this week. Don Alverto Taxo, a Quichua elder and Iachak (community leader/healer) from Equador, invites us all to trust the universal human intuition to bring greater harmony into our lives, and to seek after life’s deeper meaning. I appreciate his message, but also love the music in the background; the children playing; the sheep; the gorgeous green landscape. This is visually beautiful and spiritually uplifting.
The beautiful innocence of the children in the video made me think of this poem.
in my village
holiness was everywhere
like oxygen like breath
it sparked and it hummed
birdsong in the trees
we children carried our joy
down the long road to the schoolhouse
all day it grew inside us
big like hungry flowers
when evening arrived like a blanket
we danced in the dark by our lights
while our parents talking and cooking
laughing rang the bell
giving thanks around the table
we’d pause for eternal half-fullness
breaking bread and stealing kisses
between sips of sweet autumn wine
and sometimes it rained in my village
and we opened the windows to listen
to the fertile music sound of it
telling stories by the fire
then marveling at the splendid
sheer distance of the starlight
we’d ask for vivid dreams
to bless us in our beds
in my village my village
in my village…
~Ingrid Goff-Maidoff
from the Chapbook, Calling Forth the Riches
Here’s another irresistible video:
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