"Honeymoon with Big Joy" #12
Featuring Ann Lamott, Conrad Chow, and Sinfonia Toronto
Welcome to “Honeymoon with Big Joy”
Remember, you’re the co-creator of this dive. Do as much or as little as you’d like, when you’d like, how you’d like, with the materials I provide. Just keep gentle faith with yourself.
Set your intention
Take a moment to name the primary intention you have for this month-long deep dive and/or this particular session. Take a quiet moment to center yourself in that intention.
En-JOY the music
Read the selection
I invite you to read this selection twice—aloud, at least once. You may also listen to my reading, perhaps with your eyes closed.
FROM ALMOST EVERYTHING: NOTES ON HOPE Ann Lamott Almost everyone is screwed up, broken, clingy, scared, and yet designed for joy. Even (or especially) people who seem to have it more or less together are more like the rest of us than you would believe. I try not to compare my insides to their outsides, because this makes me much worse than I already am, and if I get to know them, they turn out to have plenty of irritability and shadow of their own. Besides, those few people who aren’t a mess are probably good for about twenty minutes of dinner conversation. This is good news, that almost everyone is petty, narcissistic, secretly insecure, and in it for themselves, because a few of the funny ones may actually long to be friends with you and me. They can be real with us, the greatest relief. As we develop love, appreciation, and forgiveness for others over time, we may accidentally develop those things toward ourselves, too. . . . This is how most of us are—stripped down to the bone, living along a thin sliver of what we can bear and control, until life or a friend or disaster nudges us into baby steps of expansion. We’re all both irritating and a comfort, our insides both hard and gentle, our hearts both atrophied and pure. How did we all get so screwed up? Putting aside our damaged parents, poverty, abuse, addiction, disease, and other unpleasantries, life just damages people. There is no way around this. Not all the glitter and concealer in the world can cover it up. We may have been raised in the illusion that if we played our cards right, life would work out. But it didn’t, it doesn’t. . . . How can we know all this, yet somehow experience joy? Because that’s how we’re designed—for awareness and curiosity. We are hardwired with curiosity inside us, because life knew that this would keep us going even in bad sailing . . . Life feeds anyone who is open to taste its food, wonder, and glee—its immediacy. (from Almost Everything: Notes on Hope)
Contemplate/Create
Use any of these questions however you wish—e.g., as openings for meditation or prayer, as prompts for journaling or poetry-writing, as sparks for drawing or painting, as catalysts for change-making . . . You may also ignore my questions altogether to go off in other directions!
Ann Lamott suggests that we’re “hardwired with curiosity . . . because life knew that this would keep us going.” What role does curiosity play in your own joy? What is curiosity nudging you toward even now?
Do you tend to believe that you’re more “screwed up, broken, clingy, and scared” than everybody else? Do you tend to focus on your own sense of inadequacy rather than your being “designed for joy”?
Reflect on (or write about) a time when you rejoiced in an unexpected “baby step of expansion.”
Want to visit with other Rafters in the Deep Dive?
Here are two options: either leave a comment on this post using the button, or join the chat thread dedicated to this Deep Dive. (Note: if you haven’t created a Substack profile yet, you’ll be asked to do so before you can comment or chat.)
These materials are for educational purposes only. Not for sale or reproduction.
Join us on October 31 for “Rafter Refuge”!
6:30-8:00PM Central (7:30 ET, 5:30 MT, 4:30 PT)
Let’s close this Deep Dive with a time of voluntary sharing. (It’s fine just to listen!) Come and reflect with other Rafters on “Honeymoon with Big Joy.” Registration is required for this celebration.
Questions? Never hesitate to contact me.
See you tomorrow.
what a great quote. It reminds me of what my Buddhist teacher said - we are all a bag of dirty potatoes rubbing up against one another until we become cleaner. I love what she wrote about how we tend to compare other people's outsides with our insides! So profoundly true!
What a great way to think about a disaster or calamity - it's a way to help me expand my world!