Dear Friends,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Chapter three of Christina Feldman’s Boundless Heart<\/em> delves into the heart quality of joy. She explains that joy can be cultivated, that joy can be a place where our heart rests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One master of describing joy was Mary Oliver, a poet who managed to capture in words the beauty and wonder of this world. In honor of her recent passing, I’ll share a few snippets that bring in some elements of Christina’s introductory words on joy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Christina mentions that many times joy comes without us planning for it – “joy can take us by surprise, born of the simplest of life experiences.” (page 83)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mary Oliver described such moments of unexpected joy, and why we should experience it when it arises:<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happened better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.<\/p>Mary Oliver, “Don’t Hesitate”, in Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver<\/a><\/em>, page 61<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Christina says that with the intimacy with things that we gain through mindfulness, “we simply learn to make room for joy, learning to see, listen, and attend to all things with a spacious heart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Parker J. Palmer captured this connection between mindfulness and joy in a column he wrote, “To Instruct Myself Over and Over in Joy”. The flavor of joy in the list of the brahma viharas<\/em> is called mudita<\/em> in Pali, often translated as empathetic joy, appreciative joy, and similar variations. Christina describes this further:<\/p>\n\n\n\n It speaks of our capacity to celebrate, honor, and rejoice in the happiness and well-being of another. This is a significant aspect of the fabric of joy, tempering our tendencies to envy others, to compare ourselves to others in ways that we feel ourselves to be deprived or inadequate, and to come to know a selfless joy in the face of another\u2019s happiness. Yet for us to know this specific dimension of joy, it is essential for us to know the vastness of the landscape of joy.<\/p>page 86<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n I think Mary Oliver succinctly describes how we can “know the vastness” with this stanza:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Instructions for living a life: This will be my intention for today. Will you join me in doing the same?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Warm wishes, Dear Friends, Chapter three of Christina Feldman’s Boundless Heart delves into the heart quality of joy. She explains that joy can be cultivated, that joy can be a place where our heart rests. One master of describing joy was Mary Oliver, a poet who managed to capture in words the beauty and wonder of this world. In honor of\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[162],"tags":[137,84,17,188],"class_list":["post-518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jan-2019","tag-christina-feldman","tag-joy","tag-mary-oliver","tag-parker-j-palmer"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=518"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":522,"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518\/revisions\/522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
https:\/\/onbeing.org\/blog\/to-instruct-myself-over-and-over-in-joy\/<\/a>
In the article, he references Mary Oliver’s poem Mindful<\/em>, in which she says, “Every day I see or hear something that more or less kills me with delight.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.<\/em><\/p> Mary Oliver, from “Sometimes”, in Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver<\/em>, page 105<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Andrea<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"