Causeless Joy - Naomi Shihab Nye

 It's difficult to know what to do with so much happiness.
With sadness, there's something to rub against.
A wound to tend with lotion and cloth.
When the world falls in around you,
you have pieces to pick up, something to hold
in your hands like ticket stubs or change.

But happiness floats.
It doesn't need you to hold it down.
Doesn't need anything.
Happiness lands on the roof of the next house singing
and disappears when it wants to. 

[.....]

Everything has a life of its own.

It, too, could wake up filled with possibilities of coffee cake
and ripe peaches and love even the floor which needs to be
swept, the soiled linens, and scratched records... 

Since there's no place large enough to contain so much happiness,
 you shrug, your raise your hands, and it flows out of you into
 everything you touch.

You're not responsible.

You take no credit.

As the night sky takes no credit for the moon,
but continues to hold it and to share it
and in that way, be known.

Naomi Shihab Nye

with thanks to The Beauty We Love

Photo - Mystic Meandering

~

I know it may seem strange to be posting about
Joy and Happiness etc. during such chaotic, disruptive,
apocalyptic times. I'm surprised as well that this has happened,
so just offering a bit of inspiration...  

This doesn't mean that I am
untouched by the struggles and difficulties of others.
I also continue to have my "moments" as well...

There's a lot going on for all of us...

The world, even with its turmoil, becomes, or is seen as,
a "divine play" or Cosmic Dance.  We find we can be
in the world, as it is, and not struggle with what is happening,
or try to "fix" it; but allow life to unfold as it does in its own rhythm;
 not seeking "liberation" or freedom from the world, but living
from the Deep Quiet space within, and let that show us 
where we can contribute with mindful engagement,

not emotional, reactive chaos...

MM

Kindness and Sorrow - Naomi Shihab Nye

[.....]

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.

You must speak it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters
and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crown of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

Naomi Shihab Nye

from: Words Under the Words: Selected Poems

[this is only an excerpt from one of the poems
in that collection].

Photo from the Internet

Kindness - Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
Like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters
and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crown of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

Naomi Shihab Nye

from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems

via: The Beauty We Love