Seeing the Joy of Life

Two selections from the June 2010 issue of O Magazine:

Regaining Your Eyesight after 33 Years of Blindness

"Simple everyday things bring me to tears.  Watching butter being spread is fascinating.  Cutting my meat without struggling gives me so much joy.  I look at my husband and say, 'I did that myself.'  I'm surrounded by so much beauty and color: my husband's blue eyes, the red pieces on the Candy Land game that my grandson and I play, the way the light hits the colored glass windows at church, the stark branches against the blue winter sky.  I've been watching movies of my children when they were in high school, playing volleyball, acting in plays.  Imagining them doing those things wasn't the same.  I was 23 when I lost my sight, and my children were 2 and 5.  When I see my young grandchildren, it's as if I'm looking at my children again when they were little -- picturing how the wind blew my daughter's hair across the side of her face.  I can't wait to witness my granddaughter's first steps.  And I love watching my grandson dance.  When he used to visit and wanted to play outside, he always knew that Grandma stayed on the deck.  But I recently told him, 'Grandma isn't going to stay on the deck anymore.'"

- Jenny Peterson, who received a prosthetic implant in January 2010 to restore the sight that she lost in 1976 after a reaction to antibiotics

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Seeing the World From the Top of a 16-Story Tree

"It's like climbing to outer space.  There are millions of undiscovered creatures in every nook and cranny.  Some are two feet long, some smaller than a raindrop.  At 165 feet up, I'm the first to see rain on the horizon.  There are 1,000 shades of green, and I usually can't see the forest floor.  Sometimes I stay overnight, and it's too much fun to sleep.  The tree's strong architecture is very protecting.  The swaying lulls me like I'm a baby.  At night the insects chew and chirp - it's a symphony by Mother Nature, Times Square in the forest."

- Tropical rainforest canopy biologist and conservationist Margaret D. Lowman, PhD, who began taking her two children up with her into the treetops when they were 4 and 6 years old

quote by Leon Bloy

Joy is the most infallible sign of the presence of God.

The Light of Smiles

     I will light the match of smiles.  My gloom veil will disappear.  I shall behold my soul in the light of my smiles, hidden behind the accumulated darkness of ages.  When I find myself, I shall race through all hearts with the torch of my soul-smiles.  My heart will smile first, then my eyes and my face.  Every body-part will shine in the light of smiles.

     I will run amid the thickets of melancholy hearts and make a bonfire of all sorrows.  I am the irresistible fire of smiles.  I will fan myself with the breeze of God-joy and blaze my way through the darkness of all minds.  My smiles will convey His smiles and whoever meets me will catch a whiff of my divine joy.  I will carry fragrant purifying torches of smiles for all hearts.

from Metaphysical Meditations by Paramahansa Yogananda (1982).

An Attitude Adjustment Admonishment, delivered in the language of Love

Change of attitude can come in the twinkling of an eye.  You can be down in the depth of despair one moment and in seventh heaven the next, so change and change quickly and dance and sing through this day hand in hand with Me.  Let us do what has to be done with joy and thanksgiving and deepest love.

Channeled guidance through Eileen Caddy of Findhorn

God is Love: a quote by Meister Eckhart

If anyone should ask me what God is, I should answer: God is love, and so altogether lovely that creatures all essay to love his loveliness, whether they do so knowingly or unbeknownst, in joy or sorrow.