THE GREAT GRATITUDE ADVENTURE/ DAY TWENTY-SEVEN/ JOY

"Morning Glow in the Village"

JOY

Does it exist inside or outside  ourselves?

Can we choose it or does it simply overtake us?

Is it in things, experiences, relationships?

Like a good mystery, the answers are there for each of us.

It is the clues we must uncover.

When do we experience joy?

In real laughter?

In breathtaking moments of nature revealed?

The beauty of birth or the experience of true love?

It is, no doubt, unique to each of us.

Who experiences joy?

The youngster or the oldster?

The academically educated or the one educated by life?

The rich and powerful or the poor and powerless?

Or all of the stages between  the aforesaid?

It would appear that anyone can

under almost any circumstance...

Victor Frankl,  survivor of the Nazi death camps, spoke of finding joy in the oddest of things---as in hearing the news that the particular camp he had come to was small and therefore had no gas ovens.

How do we experience joy?

Can we arrange for it to happen?

Can it be timed or measured?

Is there a little joy as compared to a big joy or is there simply JOY?

It would appear that weighing joy is right up there with weighing thoughts---no scale has been created for it---It’s small enough to fit inside us and yet too big to measure.

What is joy?

An open ended eternity as opposed to a limited life

It is 

the expression of life

It is 

the veil removed

It is  LIFE seen through brand new vision

Beholding all the enormity, all the possibilities, all the word defying amazingness that this thing we refer to as life ...IS.

Dig deep into your soul

Harvest the seed planted there

For each of us were given a measure

To be that one

Whose living

Brings JOY

overflowing

without measure

unimaginable

To light

The JOY of love

The JOY of hope

The JOY of peace

The JOY of beauty

The JOY of giving

The JOY of receiving

The JOY of laughter

The JOY of JOY

When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.

~Rumi

I want a life that sizzles and pops and makes me laugh out loud. And I don't want to get to the end, or to tomorrow, even, and realize that my life is a collection of meetings and pop cans and errands and receipts and dirty dishes. I want to eat cold tangerines and sing out loud in the car with the windows open and wear pink shoes and stay up all night laughing and paint my walls the exact color of the sky right now. I want to sleep hard on clean white sheets and throw parties and eat ripe tomatoes and read books so good they make me jump up and down, and I want my everyday to make God belly laugh, glad that he gave life to someone who loves the gift. 

~ Shauna Niequist

Scatter joy!

 ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Now, go do your thing.

In JOY!

THE GRATITUDE  WINNER FOR TODAY  IS.....

Dana Burton

Congrats Dana!   Click here to email me with your snail mail address:)

Just so you know, all winners are selected using Random.org services---there is no way I could ever pick just one from all the wonderful gratitude comments being posted each day!!

Only 3 Days Left!!

And yes, I have a plan for what we are going to do once we have reached the end of November....stay tuned:)))

If you missed it--there are some especially nice things I'm giving away this week:

The Gratitude Giveaway for November 29 is a 

Kindle Reader.

The Gratitude Giveaway for November 30 is a 

$450  Gift Certificate

(To be used on either one of my original paintings or one of my 2014 workshops in Kentucky)

The Gratitude Giveaway for Everyone is a FREE digital download of my newest book containing all the paintings and my writings for the Gratitude Adventure. 

(Virtual Hug Included;) 

Here's tomorrow's Gratitude Giveaway

Let There Be Love, my book of paintings and writings.

To get your name in the hat for this and for the big drawings at the end of this month, leave your comment and report back tomorrow to see A) if you've won and B)  to leave another comment:)

Sharing is good....please share the JOY and the Gratitude  with one special person today:))

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