The Cap Cloud

This morning as I was snowshoeing out in our field—Gracie-the chocolate-labradoodle racing and romping with the kind of unabashed joy coveted by humans—cap clouds were beginning to form over Mt. Adams. Cap clouds (also referred to as lenticular clouds) form as strong winds flow over the mountain, pushing moist air upward where it cools and condenses into clouds.

Good weather forecasters, cap clouds often indicate a weather change is on the way. Knowing that a storm is brewing helps us prepare for what is to come, whether that be stocking up on food supplies, battening down the hatches, checking up on an elderly neighbor, or throwing in extra layers before heading down the road. Cap clouds alert mountain climbers of potentially, dangerous and possibly life threatening conditions, much like our National Weather Service* serves as an early warning system for us and our neighbors near and far.

This morning with Mt Adams looming in the near distance, if a storm was on the way, it wasn’t here yet. Just the clouds that suggested one might be coming. But for now, the sun was shining, the snow sparkling, and the field in perfect condition for snowshoeing. Gracie noticed none of the warning signs, intent only on the smells of the critters burrowed beneath the snow, the open spaces in which to cavort, and the ball I pulled out of my pocket for her to retrieve. Come what may in the hours ahead, she was hellbent on enjoying what was right here, right now.

Not a bad way to go through life as a human either. Not that we should live with our head in the clouds of denial or buried in the sands of despair, but rather that we heed the warnings of stormy weather ahead, and care well for ourselves and our fellow human beings. Whatever the storms, we will weather them together in the world that we inhabit together. And while we’re at it, let’s choose to live with as much unabashed joy as our human hearts can muster. Like Gracie-the-chocolate labradoodle.

This is an unpaid political announcement. Call your elected officials and tell them to protect and support the important, life-saving, and non-partisan work of NOAA, which includes the National Weather Service.

Advent 2020: A Season of Opposites

Advent is a season of anticipation and expectation. My faith tradition marks the four Sundays of Advent by lighting four candles, each symbolizing a different theme. While there are slight variations, four that are quite common among many denominations are hope, peace, joy, and love. This past Sunday we lit the first Advent candle.

If ever we were in need of hope, it is now.

And yet, the pandemic rages on and the race for a vaccine is far from over.

If ever we were in need of peace, it is now.

And yet, the battle for the better angels of our collective nature rages on.

If ever we were in need of joy, it is now.

And yet, the days grow shorter and the nights longer, shrouding our outer world with the same darkness that threatens our inner light.

If ever we were in need of love, it is now.

And yet, we must choose loneliness over love as we cannot gather with those we love the most because we love them the most.

We light an Advent candle to symbolize the hope of better days to come and the despair of how long it might take for them to get here. Both are true.

We light an Advent candle to symbolize the peace that passes all understanding and the battles that make no sense. Both are true.

We light an Advent candle to symbolize joy to world and the sorrow that is engulfing it. Both are true.

We light an Advent candle to symbolize the love that is all around us and the loneliness because those we love are not. Both are true.

Advent 2020 is as much a season of opposites as it is of anticipation. Hope and despair, peace and strife, joy and sorrow, love and loneliness.

We light the candles, because both are true.

(With gratitude to Pastor Laura Robinson)

No Laughing Matter

“A merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones.”

— Proverbs 17:22 KJV

Today, I feel great, as in awesome. I haven’t felt this good, this upbeat, this happy, in, well, in since I can’t remember when. And it’s not because vaccines for the Coronavirus have gotten FDA approval and are being widely distributed. It isn’t because the current president has graciously conceded defeat and authorized a peaceful transfer of power. Nor is it because I can hug my family and friends with abandon, gather together around a table to share a meal, or see fewer wrinkles when I look in the mirror.

None of those things have happened.

And it’s not because the Seattle Seahawks beat the Arizona Cardinals Thursday night. Which did happen. (Well, maybe that helped just a little.)

It took me awhile to figure out why I woke up on the bright side of the bed, which isn’t how I normally roll. It turned out to be pretty simple.

It was laughter. Laughter was the magic sauce that brightened my day and lightened my load.

Last night just before crawling into bed I received a text from one of our daughters about our four and a half month old grand-boy. His bedtime routine includes feeding him just before he goes to bed. Last night he stopped nursing, looked up at his mom and just started laughing. And couldn’t quit. He just laughed, and laughed, and laughed some more. He was , she texted, like a little person who just found out how good laughing feels.

Drifting off to sleep, just thinking about that little happy-to-his-toes-boy laughing, made me laugh.

This morning over my first cup of coffee in the pre-dawn dark on our porch, I watched a Taylor Calmus, aka dudedad, story.

It.

Was.

Hilarious.

I couldn’t stop laughing. (Do yourself a favor and watch it— maybe more than once.)

Yesterday ended with laughter. Today started with it. Psychology Today suggests that laughter can boost our immune system and our mood, lower anxiety, help us release tension, and foster resilience. Sounds like good medicine to me.

Life is no laughing matter right now.

Which is exactly why laughing matters more than ever.

Photo by Rodolfo Quirós from Pexels

Shake A Stick At It

It was a cold, wet, dark, drizzly morning in our little neck of the woods. But rain or shine, Gracie-the-chocolate-labradoodle needs to get outside and get some exercise, and frankly, so do I.

Heading out it didn’t feel like there was much joy in the air, and to be sure, there are days when joy can be hard to come by. Part way down our road we came upon a downed branch from a nearby tree. It was almost twice as long as Gracie with smaller branches sticking out all over, and my thought was to toss it off to the side of the road out of the way of cars. Just throw it away, be done with it, and check the walk-the-dog-in-spite-of-the-cold-wet-dark-drizzly-joyless morning off of my list.

Gracie, however, had a different idea.

She grabbed that stick by one of the branches and took off at full tilt. She shook it this way, and then that way. Head held high, tail up in the air, she pranced up the road, raced in circles, lost her grip on the branch, and snatched it up again. Shaking a stick at the cold, wet, dark, drizzly morning, up and down the road she pranced, around and around the field she raced. She just simply wouldn’t, or more likely couldn’t, quit. She was brown, curly haired joy from tip to tail. Pretty soon, so was I—minus the curly brown hair and tail. Joy, it seems, is contagious.

Rather than shake our fist at a dark day, maybe we can try being like Gracie, and shake a joyful stick at it instead.

This Is The Day

This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.

Psalm 118:24

The alarm went off at 5AM this morning. Opening my still sleepy eyes, this was the image that greeted me through our window.

The first words that came to mind were those of the writer of the words from the book of Psalms quoted above. Grabbing my phone I stepped out into the cold early morning air, the frozen grass crunching beneath my feet, and captured the image of the moon as it set, ushering in the morning of a new day.

Walking back into the house it dawned on me, again, that this day, like every day, is a gift. It is the day that has been given to us, and it is the day in which we can choose to rejoice.

Or not.

The Psalmist doesn't say, “Tomorrow is the day” or “Someday, or another day, or yesterday” She (or he for that matter) says, “This is the day”. He (or she for that matter) doesn’t say, “We are rejoicing” or “We should rejoice” or “We might, could, must, or will try to rejoice.” The Psalmist says, “We will rejoice and be glad in it.”

Rejoicing is a choice. A commitment to find a way to be glad in this day which has been given to us. It is the only one we have. The day before is gone, and the day ahead not promised. It is only this day in which we can choose to rejoice.

Or not.

As I look around the world that is within my reach (and don’t even get me started on the world at large), on any given day there is at least as much heartache as there is happiness, as much pain as there is peace, and as many problems as there are solutions. It is in the midst of the complexity of our very human lives that we are called to rejoice.

This is the day that has been given to us.

Will we rejoice in it?

Or not?

The choice is ours.

The Joy Of Sadness

Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.

Psalm 30:5

Joy is not the absence of sorrow.

Sorrow, however can be a gateway to joy.

There are few of us who look forward to pain and loss, much less the deep, dark emotions that accompany us in our  grief. It can be tempting to try and shorten our times of sadness, to move through them as swiftly as we can, and even to attempt to escape them altogether through our coping mechanisms of choice. But sorrow has a purpose. It isn’t meant to break our hearts, but to break them wide open. As I wrote in BLUSH: Women & Wine, There is a cleansing that takes place when we grieve with our whole hearts. By moving through it , rather than hiding from it, we come out the other side made more whole through our willingness to be broken.

Take heart.

Be courageous.

Weeping may endure for a night.

But joy is to be found in the mourning.

Where Did The Joy Go?

I can lose my joy in a nano second.

And the culprit?

COMPARISON

Sometimes I compare myself to others to see if I measure up, and everything seems to be fair game…Work, Money, Book Sales, Social Media Platform, Blog Following, Body Image, Our Home, Family Dynamics, Emotional Intelligence, Education, Mindfulness, Spirituality, Physical Fitness, Creativity, Stature, Puppy Training Progress…just to name a few.

As soon as I focus on mine vs theirs, joy slips out and discouragement sneaks in.

On the other hand, some of the harshest comparison comes when I look at where I am in relationship to where I think I should be in any one of the categories listed above.

As soon as I focus on who I am vs who I think I should be, joy slips out and shame sneaks in.

Our work, here on planet earth, is to become our most authentic, wholehearted self. To be the best us we can be. In other words, to be our true self. The one who is uniquely equipped to help, heal, and love the world that is within our reach.

When we live from that place, nothing can rob us of our joy.

With gratitude to Katie Meleney for this tiny wooden sign that hangs above my desk to remind me…

In A Heartbeat

Joy resides in the heart.  

Today has me thinking a lot about hearts. A few months ago my husband discovered, kind of by a fluke, that his heart was beating too fast, and somewhat irregularly. Rather than getting its signal from the sinus node, which regulates the heartbeat, his ticker was responding to a different impulse. While not imminently dangerous, in the long term it would be good to take care of it.

Today, he did.

His doctor, a cardiac electrophysiologist, put a catheter up into his heart to locate and shut down the misfiring cells. He’s out of surgery, and we will head home tonight with his heart, once again, responding to the beat of the right drum.

I think joy in our hearts is a lot like that.

We are meant to experience joy deep within, and come wired with an internal signal to regulate the quiet, steady heartbeat of joy that can sustain us even in the midst of our most challenging days. But sometimes we let fear and anxiety, anger and resentment, guilt and shame run amok, and suddenly our hearts are out of whack too. In other words, we allow the wrong impulses to regulate the state of our hearts.

Time to locate and shut down the misfiring messages, and allow our hearts to do what they were designed to do.

Beat with the quiet, steady heartbeat of joy. 

Choosing Joy

Entering this third week of Advent and its theme of Joy, I am struggling to unpack this tiny word. It feels so important, and so universal to the longings of our human hearts, and yet it so hard to describe.

It’s kind of like happiness. But not exactly.

Happiness is more like a state of mind, while joy is a state of being.

Happiness happens to us, while joy happens inside of us.

Happiness comes and goes, while joy can take up permanent residence.

Happiness depends on outside circumstances, while joy is an inside job.

Maybe joy is both a choice and a practice. Life is hard, and will always be a mixture of the good, the bad, and the seriously ugly, but in the midst of it all, I am learning that I can choose joy anyway. I can practice joy no matter what.

Rather than try and unpack its meaning, maybe I’ll just wrap my arms around this tiny word and hold on for dear life.

Want to join me?

Tiny Joy Vase: Beanpole Pottery

Beholding Joy

It is the third Sunday in Advent, ushering in the theme of Joy.

Wonder is a doorway to joy.