The other day I played the CD Spinning by Claudia Schmidt (claudiashmidt.com). The song was called Here Comes Joy and the lyrics continue, “Let Her In…”. After I played it, my three year old Chinese daughter leaned her head forward from the back seat and said “Mama.” “What. Ana Joy?” I asked. “Mama, Let her in. Let her in, Mama.” Out of the mouth of babes.
The song says Joy is a deliberate destination – that you can’t stumble into Joy like you fall into despair. The song implies that Joy want us. Isn’t that a beautiful notion? Joy wants us. Are we paying attention? Sometimes just the idea of joy makes me think of the plethora of self-help books that have formulas for attaining this compelling state of being. Someone called too much education “the curse of knowledge” because it makes us all filled up with “I know”, leaving no space for curiosity or even “I’m not sure.”
I find meditation gives me the space to breathe… before launching into my “I know” . I sometimes forget that the insights I’m blessed to receive from client readings are only foundation pieces for new questions. What would I do without a three year old to inform me that Aunt Mary’s house lives in Chicago and that Monkey (her favorite stuffed animal and best friend) is from Russia, and that Monkey’s Mama (she refers to herself like this in third person) is from China? She helped me understand that Snoopy is Monkey’s father and that she has no problems with this interspecies family. Such chaos she makes of my ordered reality – the one that thinks it has answers from Spirit. So Ana Joy teaches me that Spirit is pure creativity – a creativity that laughs at our notion of how things should be; what constitutes a gift and what is a challenge; and who is our friend and teacher and who is our nemesis.
Today I promised myself to open, allow, and receive some unruly, illogical, and unsanitized versions of reality so that Spirit can get through my highly knowledgeable and dense head! “Mama!” “What, Ana Joy?” I asked again. “I’m joy, Mama. I’m Joy!” “Yes, you are, honey, yes, you are.”