The Way You Keep The World At Bay

Some days, it feels like the world is pressing in on every side, that it is all but impossible to see anything good in anything. It just feels like so much, too much, like it's better just to curl up in the darkest dark and not be.

I hate those days. I hate every last inch of them, and I spend so much of my life fighting against them, tooth and nail. The world needs more joy.

In my Ruhi 2 group this week, we were asked to rank things we liked according to how much joy they brought us. It was trying to make a point about how teaching the Baha'i Faith can bring us immeasurable joy, but I just ran face first into that question, and it was like my entire brain came to a screaming halt. How could I possibly *rank* joy? The joy of snuggling my cat and feeling his rumbliest whistle-y purrs when he is most content is COMPLETELY different than the joy of delving into a new romance novel by one of my favorite authors, and both of those are, again, COMPLETELY different than the joy of coming home and seeing my husband, still in my house. (I don't know if that will *ever* stop bringing me joy.)

I live my life by two things - starfishes and teaspoons. Starfishes remind me I can always make a difference, even if it is just a tiny one to one person, and teaspoons remind me of similar - emptying the ocean one teaspoon at a time will take a really long time, but it's very easy to hand people a spoon. Small things are my bread and butter. I love living by a paradigm that just seeks out small joy, because it means I get to experience joy more often.

A perfect example of small joy happened the other day - my husband and I were coming home from groceries after a long (but good) day - we'd done important government paperwork errands, we had gone to the splash pad with my sister, my nephew and my mom (chasing a toddler around the park is delightful and exhausting all at once), we had gotten my husband a new phone and set up banking for him here in Canada, and we'd gotten groceries and I was *tired*. I almost fell asleep on the bus home from Walmart, I was just *done*.

We get to our stop, and I manage to get the granny cart of groceries off the bus, and this little girl (less than ten for sure) comes rushing up to us, a fistful of daisies in her hand. I look over to her parent, who nods, and she brightly informs me one of these daisies is for me, and handed it over. It was *so* simple. A single tiny daisy, given freely and with much joy. I told her, emphatically, that she'd just made my day, and she beamed a bright happy smile at me before joining her parent on a nearby bench again.

It wasn't anything big or fancy, but it really did make my day - it was a reminder that even when I am tired, even when I think a good day couldn't get better (I mean there had already been toddler giggles and french fries and sliding down slides and the cool water of a wading pool against my toes, time spent with my family, reminders that my husband is really, really and truly, here to stay, all in just one day!), the world can still surprise me.

As Abdu'l-Baha reportedly said,  ""Joy is the best cure for your illness. Joy is better than a hundred thousand medicines for a sick person. If there is a sick person and one wishes to cure him, let one cause joy and happiness in his heart."(Attributed to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, from the 1906 Pilgrim Notes of Ali Kuli Khan). So if joy is really all of these things, and can do these things, why wouldn't we want to experience it as often as possible?

When asked about what brings joy, we always seem to try to think of the most pure, the most holy, the most selfless giving acts humanity is able to do. Prayer, acts of sacrifice and service to those who have less or are in harder spots, acts of worship, all of those are things people will tell you bring them joy - as if we are afraid to say that a good cup of tea, or finishing a tricky puzzle, or finally making our grandma's gingerbread recipe turn out the way she did bring us joy, because that doesn't feel big enough. 

Here's my challenge, dear and beloved friends - take time to feel joy. Find it in the way you feel when your favourite treat is on sale at the grocery store, the way it feels when you get not-bills in your mailbox, the way it feels when a baby laughs or someone you loves smiles in that secret way that reminds you they think the world of you. Find it in a pair of clean socks fresh from the dryer, in a perfectly made bed with your favourite sheets, in having perfectly timed transit that gets you to where you need to be when you need it. 

Live, unafraid to seek the small joys with delight and abandon. It's not going to make every moment perfect, but you get little bits of happy for your soul more often, and I think that's it's own bit of magic. 

God is Bigger than the Boogieman

 I watched a LOT of Veggietales growing up. I still sing the hairbrush song when things go missing, I know that everyone needs a waterbuffalo, and I will still lament that I've never been to Boston in the fall. (Apologies if these songs are stuck in your head now too!)

I've been singing "God is Bigger than the Boogieman" a lot to myself lately. Partially because it reminds me God is also bigger than Godzilla, and I've been contemplating finally watching my first ever Godzilla movie on the advice of a friend who knows more about Godzilla than just about anyone else I've met. But if I had to be truthful (and I've done Ruhi 1, I know that "truthfulness is the foundation of all human virtues"!), it's also partially because I am being chased by the biggest anxiety dinosaurs right now.

It's not even that anything's wrong, per se - I've finally gotten to find out what living with my husband full time is like (IT IS AMAZING. Like even boring adulting like laundry is great.) and it's summer and work isn't too awful and I have an awesome Baha'i community I belong in and I have friends who I get to spend lots of time with as the world allows.

But that's the frustrating thing - like the anxiety dinosaur points out, none of this is logical. It's my brain being a tricksy tricksy meatpile. So what can help me feel better? 

Abdu'l-Baha points out in his Paris Talks that "[t]he mind and spirit of man advance when he is tried by suffering. The more the ground is ploughed the better the seed will grow, the better the harvest will be. Just as the plough furrows the earth deeply, purifying it of weeds and thistles, so suffering and tribulation free man from the petty affairs of this worldly life until he arrives at a state of complete detachment. His attitude in this world will be that of divine happiness. Man is, so to speak, unripe: the heat of the fire of suffering will mature him." Basically, all this fear stuff is teaching me to let go. It's not easy! When my brain starts going in mad circles, remembering I am just a small sapling trying to reach the sky feels impossible. I feel like I can dig my roots in deep and stretch my branches as far as they'll go, but it still feels like I can't possibly be enough, do enough, feel enough, detach enough. I am too small, and the world feels too big. And I know that the Bab reminds me that God "maketh victorious whomsoever He pleaseth, through the potency of His behest" (and there's a REALLY good song version of that by Badasht, here, that I love singing), but sometimes even that feels hard for me to grasp, because I feel like I am too small to even be worth the notice.

Luckily, once again, I turn to the stuff I've been learning in the Ruhi Institute courses (which are AMAZING and I love them. Seriously. Even if you're not Baha'i, I bet you'd be able to learn some cool stuff out of some of this) and it's got an answer for me from the Writings about how it's perfectly fine, because God's got my back. "Take thou thy portion of the ocean of His grace, and deprive not thyself of the things that lie hidden in its depths. Be thou of them that have partaken of its treasure. A dewdrop out of this ocean would, if shed upon all that are in the heavens and on the earth, suffice to enrich them with the bounty of God" (Arising to Serve, page 8) I love this passage for two reasons - it reminds me that I am SUPPOSED to reach out for God's grace, that I am not supposed to deprive myself of it, and also that His grace is SO big and SO much and SO powerful, that I need just the teeny tiniest bit to be able to do great things. 

So even if I am scared, even if I don't think I know what I'm doing, even if all I can hear is the roaring of the anxiety dinosaur, I can still rest assured that I'm not alone, that God's there, helping me grow and be strong and be the best tree in the garden that I possibly can, full of delicious fruit that I can share with everyone. And for me, that's enough. 

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