Happiness is who you are: Joy is the living!

To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise on your lips.”
~ Kahlil Gibran

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Joy, you know all too well that you alone are the word I dangle as a crystal pendant around my neck! I harken to you whispering  prayers and blessed incantations calling forth your redolent sweet spirit. I welcome and embrace the cadence of  your breathing into my heart, my mind, my life. JoY, you are my inner home. Joy, you are wings that give me flight. Joy, you are my sanctuary.  Joy, you are my living.

The days and the minutes and the hours can be trying. There is sadness, there is confusion, there is pain. My moments do not always reflect the genuine generosity of laughter's bidding. Downtrodden, even and at times half sick, I weep for peace because the world that surrounds me does not reflect the peaceable unpretentious quiet I have inside. This world is akin' to the mythical Babel. It is noise and perturbation; I am rattled that it will not get along with how I opt it to be.

It still surprises me how people can be cold and callous and rude. Even the affection that I give is thwarted and flung back in animosity. This blankets me in anguish, and though I am never one to look back at whatever fortune might have abided, and though I do not dwell in regret,  and though I turn the other cheek, still, yes, still... I share the plight of Lot's wife: petrified - reduced to a grotty' pillar of salt!

 In my darkest hurts, I shelter in a corner where I listen to my soul's faint moan for flight from this temporal body. And my being lets out a question even Richard Dawkin's has yet to spew an answer for. Who was I before I was me? Where was I before I am here? 
.
And then from nowhere the Spirit of Joy reminds me:  

“Something amazing happens when we surrender and just love. We melt into another world, a realm of power already within us. The world changes when we change. the world softens when we soften. The world loves us when we choose to love the world.” ~ Marianne Williamson

So that is the answer --> to love the world, just LoVe.

• Love even the foreboding corners of veiled heartaches. 
• Love compassionately even the tangled web of uncertainties that hover.
• Love even the hallow, the crookedness and ungratefulness that assaults. 
• Love, as Rilke conceded, even the questions themselves. 
• Love the peace and even the noise.
• Love even the darkness of the world

For if you do not love it all, then who will? Instead of railing, one must do a surrendering; In doing so one softens the world's abrasiveness. And just as a candle fairly casts it's glow, the world's somber dimness that pervades is gently illuminated by our surrender to love. There is no other way for we are annointed  to be Lightworkers. I have to love it all.

Now as I breath and relax and center my being, inspiration reminds me to take heart a deeply personal truth.
"Happiness is who you are and joy is the living!

The Enchantments of April...s' far ♥´¯`•.¸¸.• ♥ •´¯`•.¸¸.♥

An account of bashful blessings.

"It is passion, yes. But it is not love, not as I understand it.love is not a selfish need.It is not a hunger that must be fed.love should not exclude. It should make our lives broader, our hearts wider, surely. What kind of love is it that would lock us away, remove us from those around us. What kind of life is it to be alone.~ Dorcas Lane, Larkrise to Candleford

April Lunch in the Garden

April is heat! Blazing tropical summer days that appear to stretch soaky' sun drenched hours endlessly; languorous, defiant, and in instances merciless in playing flames with the mind causing  internal spurts of havoc that provoke sapped enervated tempers and sun stroked souls to whomp in weary exasperation -- and sneezing! We, creatures underneath a sun god sky, morph much like into  biting harangued fire ants that pester my garden insisting on existence, occupying the base of my mango tree wagging locked antennas in war stance lashing for territorial rights. Hah!  But, lest I make it appear, let me clarify that ---> April is NoT about ants and creepy creatures, No! Nor is it  about momentary fi·as·cos  of dispassionate connections, nOoooo! On the contrary....

April is a picnic summer basket of bashful blessings!  
And the month isn't over yet. S'far let me recount what most strikes me joyfully of the days gone by.

April is....
♥  Romantic starlit moon bright evenings!
♥  Irenic, sultry weekend afternoons reading in my backyard under the shady embrace of my "Mrs. Mango tree!"
♥ Connecting with an old friend and the resulting realizations that birthed from it.

 and April is the enchantment of...

♥ My discovery of Edna St.Vincent Millay! How I just swoon and live in her poetics!
♥ The witty Dorcas Lane! If I could only be as wise.
♥ Larkrise To Candleford! All 4 seasons were so "wonder full"...I was overcome with forlorn to have reached the last episode. I feel so lucky to have chanced all complete episodes and seasons on Youtube! I fancied it as much as I did Rosemary and Thyme!

"Laura Thyme: What's your experience with goats?
Rosemary Boxer: None.
Laura Thyme: Chickens?
Rosemary Boxer: Only in soup or sandwich form."

and yes, may I make mention of even practical enchantments..
♥ 2 new air-conditioners installed!
♥ a bigger grander no- frost ref, haha!
♥ my eldest son enrolled in college summer class with just a few more units  to complete his college diploma in Legal Management
♥ my youngest son enrolled for his summer OJT and is now with a major media outfit. I hear he is having fun. He too graduates this year.

Me

Afternoon on a Hill

I will be the gladdest thing
   Under the sun!
I will touch a hundred flowers
   And not pick one.

I will look at cliffs and clouds
   With quiet eyes,
Watch the wind bow down the grass,
   And the grass rise.

And when lights begin to show
   Up from the town,
I will mark which must be mine,
   And then start down!

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay