9. Day 10: Joy Coughs Up The Truth

I have heard joy is an inside job which is true and reasonable yet still is a bit challenging to find/see/be aware of joy when circumstances say otherwise (pain, sadness, cold, coughing fit).  It is not so much that I am not joyful it is just that the pain/cough etc is so loud I don’t hear joy.  Since I am really noticing my awareness (or lack thereof) of joy this month I quickly notice if I am not feeling joy.  Yesterday we went for a glorious walk on the moor to a place called Boot’s Folly, a four story stone structure built in the middle of a wide paddock filled with sheep.  The cold was biting but we were reasonably well rugged up.  Even the sheep had taken shelter on the ground floor of the folly (stairs removed years ago when a sheep got unceremoniously stuck half way up the stairs).  It was exhilarating being out with this incredible scenery (photos simply do not do it justice), being up close and personal with a wee mob of sheep, the bracing wind and a dear friend.  By the time we got home I can only presume my lungs had a complete disagreement with the cold air and had a fit of coughing.  I coughed so hard I thought I would turn myself inside out.

Boot’s Folly in Strine’s Moor

To be honest, I was not aware of anything but the cough and how to settle it.  I was aware enough to ask God for help and between foul cough medicine, tapping, hot herbal tea, and my friend’s suggestion of my own total silence (no talking, laughing or making noises of any kind, a certain enforced meditation or hell, depending on how you look at it;) the coughing finally subsided leaving me spent.  But it was rather a joyful spent, like how you feel after a day’s sight-seeing or with your kids at Disneyland; satisfying, fully present and a rest fully justified. So I guess joy was present, just in a myriad of forms.

The quote from my buddy Bartholomew below reminds me that in all circumstances I can participate in who and what I am:

“To finally understand what being co-creator of your life really is produces a feeling of wonder.  You find you are not out there alone, doing it all by yourself, nor is God out there doing it all without you.

What makes your life so en-JOY-able is your sense of participating in a co-creative wonder in which you have choices.

Sometimes you’ve got to climb a fence first in order to go on a walk.

Co-creating is vision-making. You have a deep inner, unconscious vision of how you would like to move in the world, of how you would like your heart to feel, your mind to think and your voice to speak.  A part of you believes you are limited, another part knows this is not so.

How do you align with the part of you that knows no limits?”——-Reflections Of An Elder Brother, Bartholomew

At the moment, my way of aligning myself with the part of me that knows, the one I call Holy Spirit, is to ask, notice and give thanks for whatever is happening, even (and perhaps especially) a terrible coughing fit.