O wondrous creatures,
By what strange miracle
Do you so often
Not smile?
A poem by Hafiz called Strange Miracle as translated by Daniel Ladinsky in the book I Heard God Laughing.
Serious stuff abounds! Difficult life situations, struggles and incredible suffering on the front page of our own life and in the news! Seemingly unworthy political candidates, discriminatory laws, racial injustice, war and hate, grief, sadness, doubt and hopelessness…how can we be happy?
Stop looking to the world for your happiness. Stop it! Stop waking up and expecting the world to be different than it was yesterday…or for someone else to fix it or change it.
Instead…practice smiling. Smile because you are alive. Wake up smiling because the darkness is giving way to light. Smile because air is entering your lungs and your heart is beating. Smile to relieve the wrinkles of stress in your face and the tension in your body. Smile to open up a place inside of your own self where you can begin to feel joy…the joy of possibility, the joy of life itself spread before you, the joy of the next greatest idea springing up from intuition. Smile to surrender to the loving presence that is God dwelling in your very being.
It is in the softening of a smile that the truth of your being is made known to you…that you are divine and essential…that your life is important…that what you do matters.
Some of us have made up a story that spiritual work is hard. I don’t think it has to be. What if we all smiled a little more…and began to infect our own self and the world with love and tenderness and possibility?
Much, much love
Paula
