Joy

"The golden moments of your life blend in fulfilment with the deepest joy and love you share with your love ones."

"The end When I die bang on cans Romp around in leaps and bounds Let whips crack in the air Call in clowns and acrobats!I want my coffin to go on a donkey Decked out in Andalusian style You can't refuse anything to a dead man And I want, by all means, go on a donkey"

"The Bible is the ultimate book of wisdom and advice."

"Time, what God first deemed holy above all else (Genesis 2:3). Thank God for the time, and very God enters that time, presence hallowing it... I awake to I AM here. When I'm present, I meet I AM, the very presence of a present God. (page 70)"

"Relationships are painful when they are not working and so joyful when they are."

"It is true, I never stop wanting to learn the hard eucharisteo for deathbeds and dark skies and the prodigal sons. But I accept this is the way to begin, and all hard things come in due time and with practice. Yet now wisps of cheese tell me gentle that this is the first secret step into euchaisteo's miracle. Gratitude for the seemingly insignificant - a seed - this plants the giant miracle. The miracle of eucharisteo, like the Last Supper, is in the eating of crumbs, the swallowing down one mouthful. Do not disdain the small. The whole of life - even the hard - is made up of the minute parts, and if I miss the infinitesimals, I miss the whole. (Page 57)"

"How does it save the world to reject unabashed joy when it is joy that saves us? Rejecting joy to stand in solidarity with the suffering doesn't rescue the suffering. The converse does. (Page 58)"

"Why are you alive? To discover joy and to share that joy with others."

"Model the qualities that you want your children to show to each other."

"Why not laugh again, and let your joy be my monument?"

"The fragrance of meditation is enlightenment."

"Joy is the realest reality, the fullest life, and joy is always given, never grasped. God gives gifts and I give thanks and I unwrap the gift given: joy. (Page 57)"

"The girl laughed again. The joy of a caged bird was in her voice."

"Do what makes YOU happy. Focus on what brings YOU joy. Appreciate and do more things that make YOU smile. Live your life for yourself. You matter! You count! You’re deserving of true happiness! This is YOUR life. Live it to the fullest! Live life with no regrets."

"Personal discipline is a most powerful character quality and one worthy of dedicating your life to nurturing."

"Joy is not a requirement of Christian discipleship, it is a consequence. It is not what we have to acquire in order to experience life in Christ; it is what comes to us when we are walking in the way of faith and obedience."

"We gardeners are healthy, joyous, natural creatures. We are practical, patient, optimistic. We declare our optimism every year, every season, with every act of planting."

"No one was ever born without that light or flame of life. Some event, some person stifles or drowns it altogether. I was always tempted to resuscitate such men by my own joyousness or luminosity. When I break glasses in a night club, as the Russians do, when my unconscious breaks out in wild rebellions, it is against life which has crippled these idealistic, romantic men. I respect these men, cold, pure, faithful, devoted, moral, delicate, sensitive, and unequal to life, more than I respect the tough-minded ones who return three blows to one received, who kill those who hurt them."

"God's gift to his sorrowing creatures is a joy worthy of their destiny."

"I write because there is nothing as joyful as writing, even when the writing is twisted and full of hate, the self-hate that makes writing not only possible but necessary. I hate myself, I hate the people around me, but what I crave is the fulfillment of some ideal."