Joy

I just read an entry of a friend of mine about joy and being incredibly happy and joyous and ecstatic about life (thanks Cait, if you read this). It made me realize that all week I've been quite intense in my spiritual contemplations and readings that I've almost forgotten to find joy in the spirit! It's not that I haven't been happy or having a good time, just that I've been too intense. I was already beginning to realize that I need to find more stillness, but in this stillness I should remember joy in life.

It also reminds me of a conversation I had with a couple Friends at the clerking workshop at Pendle Hill last November about trying to stay centered while having a "rowdy good time". I think part of having a rowdy good time is the spirit present in the joy - being totally centered all the time is not how we stereotype it! One does not have to remain calm and of moderate energy to be centered - centeredness is not necessarily a state of meditation 24/7, but a focus on the spirit at hand in everything and everyone, that is everything and everyone.

I am sad that I'll miss meeting tomorrow (I'll be sitting on an airplane somewhere between San Diego and NC), but I'm getting much better at finding my spirituality at all times everywhere, these days. I'm working on bridging the gap between what I view as my 'secular' activites and my spiritual life.