We send our thoughts scurrying ahead of ourselves to make sure we’ll beat the clock to the beginning of the next thing on our calendars.  And before we know it, another day has come to an end and we hardly know where it went because we were so seldom present.

There’s another way, you know.  It’s as simple as breathing, as easy as checking in with yourself now and then.

“Hey, Self,” you say, “How you doing?”  And you listen for the answer.  And then you send your breath to all the places in you that are tense, tight, anxious, stressed, and let your breath linger there awhile, soft and deep and easy, until you remember you that are free and alive in a beautiful world.

So it costs you a minute or two.  It’s a cheap price to pay for a miracle.  And a miracle is what happens when you remember who you are.  Suddenly you’re present again, and relaxed and in control.  You remember that you can be at ease, that you can gather in the joys of the journey, and savor them as you pass by.

Life is a gift.  Untie its ribbons with gentleness and thanksgiving.

Disguising itself, playing hide and seek, it rides through the light and the shadows.  Now it is fullness, now empty.  Now it is all, now nothing at all.

Sometimes we drown in its beauty; sometimes we are blind to its light.  We reach for it, and strive, and it is in our reaching and striving whether we know it or not.

Sometimes we taste it as sorrow, forgetting that sorrow is but the other side of joy, and that happiness is always with us, beneath our suffering and pain.

Where we want for happiness, happiness sings its ease and waits for us to tire of our wanting.  For always, it is here, flowing with passionate ease.  And always, it is exquisite.

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The purpose of life is the celebration of it.

Live!
Laugh!
Love!

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I spent an hour driving the back roads today, taking in the sights and saying goodbye to summer, and my heart filled with a sweet nostalgia for its long green days.  I wanted to live them over again, every one of them.

As I looked out over the tall rows of corn, nearly ready now for harvest, I remembered the excitement of seeing the first green shoots poking up through the soil.  The goldenrod edging the roadside reminded me of spring’s dandelions and daffodils, and I savored the memory of all the colorful flowers the passing season had placed before my eyes.

I thought about the smell of freshly mown lawns, and about the way the songbirds filled the air with their choruses at dawn and at sunset, and how dew shimmered in the grass in the morning.  The sound of the crickets singing in the fields reminded me of the thrill of hearing the peepers in the creek for the first time, and I thought about fireflies sparkling in July’s nighttime sky.

Now it’s time to tuck it all away in memory’s store.  Some winter night I’ll pull the memories out again and bask in them as I sit before a blazing fire.  But for now, I bid summer’s days a fond farewell and give thanks for having lived them.

Standing at the base of a bramble-covered driveway that led to a farm house that’s no longer there, it carries within its towering limbs a thousand tales.

It’s a majestic tree.  When you stand beneath it and gaze up at its gnarled branches, you can’t help but feel a sense of awe.  It seems noble somehow, so ancient and enduring, so in harmony with the life force that flows through its massive form.

It’s the epitome of strength and of benevolence, affording a home to countless generations of insects, squirrels and birds, shading the wildflowers that grow beneath it, feeding small creatures with its abundant crop of nuts.

I don’t know why, exactly, but when I stand beneath it I feel healed somehow, as if it has given me some of its strength and shared a silent message.  I sense its deep roots extending into the earth below me and feel my own rootedness.  I see its branches extending outward and upward and I’m inspired to reach upward and outward as well.  I see how it flourishes, despite its antiquity, and I’m encouraged to endure, and to dance, as it does, in harmony with the life force that flows on and on and on.

And so I sing its strength tonight, and share it with you.  It’s given me such blessings.  The least I can do is pass a few of them on.

“Tintinnabulation” – a glorious word, that.  It comes from the Latin word for bell, and from tintinnare, which means “to jingle.”  Unless you read Edgar Allen Poe in school, you probably never heard it before.

It’s not a word that pops lightly into my thoughts on a regular basis either.  It came to me tonight by Special Delivery.

I had just selected and named today’s photo when my phone rang.  It was my dear old chum, Michael, calling from half way across the country just to say hello and to tell me a story from our high school days.

I had set out, it seems, to help Michael build his vocabulary, and for every ten words he learned, I rewarded him with a kiss.  One of the words, he said, was “tintinnabulation,” and not only has he remembered it all these years, but often when he hears a bell ring he thinks to himself, “It must be Susie calling.”

Personally, having watched the movie A Wonderful Life a zillion times, I associate the ringing of bells with angels getting their wings.  But either way, the ringing of a bell means joy.

And whether its jingle rings silently from cherry trees or comes pealing as memory across the years, may you share its abundance freely and taste its sweetness on your lips.

He was the first in his rank to rise, and he did so bravely.  Without regard to the drought or overpowering heat, he unfurled his thick cape and gazed steadily into the day.

His task was to rise, to stand, and nothing more.  He was of the front guard, a wayshower, and he was determined to perform his mission with all the might he could muster.

The meager supply of morning dew evaporated quickly beneath the blazing sun’s gaze, but it was enough to encourage him.  He assayed his resources.  He had strong roots and faith in the soil that gave him birth.  And although there was no breeze to bring him comfort, he saw the stand of woods to the south and judged he could endure the sun until its leafy boughs would shield him.

As the day wore on, he looked about him.  It was really quite beautiful here in the field.  Goldenrod blossomed at its edge and the air was thick with bees.  Once he accustomed himself to it, he discovered the sun’s hot rays were actually pleasing.  He flung his cape open further to let more of its stimulating light play against him.  And he encouraged the troops around him to stand with him and witness the day.

Late in the afternoon, he saw an old man walking up the far end of his row, studying the troops closely.  A distance behind him a woman walked and two small dogs.  He heard the soft crunch of the man’s heavy boots as they edged nearer and nearer.  The old man stopped directly before him and bent over staring.

“Martha!  Look!”  the old man shouted to the woman behind him.  “Look, Martha!  A blossom!”  The man laughed, his wrinkled face breaking into a grin so bright it rivaled the sun.  “We’re going to have potatoes after all!  Hallelujah!”

And the blossom straightened more and was humbled and glad to have triggered such joy.

Joy rides photons as if they were bobsleds, careening through space, zipping past stars, sliding through the curves of space-time into matter just for the sheer dazzle of it.

And once it gets there, it blazes into invisible color and erupts into soaring silent song.  It sparkles its bliss like confetti, flinging it with abandon into the waters and winds.

And you drink it and breathe it without even knowing and it tastes like harmony and when you’re filled with it all you can see is beauty and the dancing spectrum of light.

You think this is a fairy tale or some fantastic story.  But it’s the nearest that truth can squeeze into words to tell you that you’re made of joy, that it’s in you, forever and always.  Drink the water.  Breathe the air.

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All organic change happens that way, as if nature herself wrote the book on kaizen.  Tiny cells divide and divide and before you know it, there’s a baby.  Feed it and blink and it’s off to school.

No muss, no fuss.  No stuck states.  No resistance to be unlearned or overcome; no dragging its heels.   Just one little move after another, a little less this, a little more that and its morning or springtime or you have the Grand Canyon carved from hard rock.

Set your course and go with the flow, one smooth move after another.  It’s a piece of cake.  Easy as pie.  Then you wake up one morning, and you’ve made miracles.  Sounds like a plan to me.

It’s no accident, you know, that the world is filled with beauty, that we perceive it not only with our senses, but with our hearts and with our souls.  No randomness gives it birth; it’s the child of design, sent to reflect Perfection in time and space.

Beauty is the cosmic harmony of creation made comprehensible to human mind.  It’s the divine dance played in rhythms of color and sound to show us the pathway to joy.  It carries the sweetness of truth, the fragrance of goodness.  Beauty delights and inspires us and awakens in us the quest to know more completely the nature of its source, and its place within us.

With utmost grace, beauty weaves a wholeness of matter, spirit and mind, signaling to us the ultimate art, beckoning us to create it in our lives.  It’s a divine hint, a whisper, of how tenderly we’re loved, and an illumination of the way home.