Every morning, before tea, before anything else, I open my front door, and stand on my porch and say,
“Thank you for this day. May I be joyful in it.”
Most of the time I don’t want to open that door. It’s snowing and cold and I’m in bare feet. Or I’m not feeling thankful or joyful at all. A lot of mornings I just want to pass by the door and go straight to the tea kettle, my favorite mug, my favorite tea, and just plain get back in bed, sipping the warm jasmine green from my tacky horse mug that has just the right action. And hide for a while from life. Still, I make myself open that door and stand there and say those words, even if they’re a limp mutter, especially on cold, wintery mornings. I have never once regretted it.
But here’s the truth: just as those words come out of my mouth, I too often simultaneously doubt that the joy will come.
And when that happens, I feel bad about myself.
And then the pull of my work day sucks me back into the house, to the kettle, and then the computer, and then…hours of screen time until my email in box is all caught up and I finally call it a day. Was I joyful in this day? Mmmmm…kind of. I mean, I took the dogs for a walk or two. I worked with one hand on their silky fur for a lot of this day. I wrote something. I edited something. Maybe I taught something. Maybe I coached someone.
But was I truly joyful?
What does it take to be joyful, especially when your work load is heavy, your worry is high, your central questions don’t have foreseeable answers, your looming sadness about the state of the world lurks constant and lusty?
Maybe joyful is too tall an order. What if I replaced the word joyful with peaceful?
I tried it this morning. It was one of those sublime summer dragonfly mornings when it’s easy to fling open the door. The dogs were eager too. Usually I feed them before our walk, but today they wanted this day more than their dog bowl. They bolted out the door into the yard, running in circles, chasing and tackling each other. And then plopped down in a patch of blooming clover, their tongues hanging out the side of their mouths, smiling. I smiled too, and I said a hearty, “Thank you for this day! May I be joy—” I stopped myself. “May I be peaceful in it.” It felt good.
And I thought…tea can wait. I want what they’ve got. So I went out in my bathrobe, and sat with them in the clover, the grass still wet with dew. One of them stretched out on her back, her legs splayed to the cotton candy clouds. The other licked her wet paws. Peaceful. What would make me peaceful right now? What do I know of peace? And I thought, The little girl in me knows exactly what to do with this moment. She used to love sitting in clover patches.
So I did something I haven’t done in years: I made a clover necklace.
I wasn’t sure how to do it at first. There must be some right Pinteresty way to do this, I thought. Didn’t feel very peaceful to bully myself about clover necklaces. So I let my fingers feel their way to the clover blossoms and I remembered how they pull up so wholly from the bottom of their stems, like lily of the valley, if you handle them just so—not too hard, not to soft. And up they came, one after the next. And then I watched as my adult fingers moved with a little me’s muscle memory, making a necklace like she’d been sitting in clover patches all her life. And had never stopped. Only she did stop. Not so peaceful, never mind joyful, letting the suck of work daily sit you in front of screens until your eyes throb and the world is blurry. This morning, my eyes were morning clover clear.
I put the necklace over my head. And then my adult mind went back to bully. Now you should try to find a four leaf clover. Not peaceful. Not when it’s a dare. So I sat there. For a long time. Touching my ephemeral necklace. And it occurred to me that I had memorized a Mary Oliver poem once, about morning. And then forgotten. The same way I’d forgotten how to make a clover necklace.
It came to me whole, and I spoke it aloud:
Every morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange
sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again
and fasten themselves to the high branches–
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands
of summer lilies.
If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails
for hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere.
And if your spirit
carries within it
the thorn
that is heavier than lead–
if it’s all you can do
to keep on trudging–
there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted–
each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,
whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.
Join me every Friday at 4:00 MST for So Now What journal writing via Zoom.
- Come find your answer to your own So Now What. I’ll guide you through this mindful practice to help you shed the past, embrace the present, and dream your future alive. And yes…peacefully. Register for free here!
The next So Now What writing workshop is Sunday, July 26th from 10:00-3:00 MST.
- Take a deep dive into your next chapter using the most powerful tool I know: writing. You do NOT have to be a writer to come. For more information and to register, click here!
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