Building Joy

Growing up I lived in many different places, city and country. We had modern tract homes, lived in Victorians, run-of-the-mill city homes, apartments and out-of-the-way hovels with treehouses. We lived in a tent one summer, and a lean-to another. Our family built a log house from scratch, and we lived many years there without water or electricity.

We moved at least once a year every year of my children, many years we changed residences several times. This had a lot of effect on various aspects of my life, and it really impacted my creative urges. I take great joy from the re-modeling, renovation or creation of a dwelling. I love to make a place my own.

Many times in my life I have dreamed of creating a home from out of the earth, a more roundy, eccentric amorphous earthy green-energy based structure. I’ve seen it in my dreams, visited it in visions, and held that I would actually live there someday. It has much the feel and look of the house built by Simon Dale for his family in Wales. I just look at those photos or photos of the Hobbit homes and I am nostalgic for my dreams.

Several years ago, my good friend Jeralynn bought a place with a bunch of acres on the Consumnes River. She shares many of the same dreams as I when it comes to building practices and being gentle on the earth. I get the great joy of staying in the guest cabin with a cob stove for New Years. Our band, Souls Journey, is going to play and lead a Kiirtan/sing-a-long for whoever shows up to celebrate. Building joy in community.

Functioning Site – What a Joy!

I’ve heard it said that if you want God to laugh, tell him you’ve got plans. Well, a comic by nature, I did just that. I have been re-building my website one page at a time for quite some while. I was being painstaking because I wanted to make it better than ever before, as I changed the focus from what I can to do to what I absolutely love to do.

I completed the project a couple weeks ago, and was quite pleased with the outcome. Except for one point. The blessed thing just loaded way too slow. Turns out I had far too many sites on one hosting account, so I purchased a bright and shiny new one with more whistles and bells etc. (joyfulnames.com)

Therein arose the laugh, loud and clear!  Parts of my site are on wordpress, and part just pure html. It was my plan that I would just migrate this whole site seemlessly. HA!  When you are dealing with data bases, and 50+ image-rich pages,  it is a little more work than I planned, to say the least, yet I was persistant. Eventually, I was able to get the entire thing completely mirrored on the new host using a different domain name, re-configure where the original domain was pointing, and make it work great. Then I pushed the one button required to rename the old host domain so the other sites on there would be taken care of. Ooops.

I guess I did that too soon. There suddenly arose many little things that I had not done in the most kosher way threatening to either be corrected or they would stand out like a sore thumb! Weeks, months of work gone totally awry!

The Joy in all of this is that it is now all corrected, and even better than before. The parts function, and I can return my focus to what really makes my heart sing. Yay!

Quiet Joy

Right now, as I start this entry it is not even 6 am, and I have been up for a couple hours. It is still outside, and in. My thoughts are allowed to take time to form with ease and patience. There is a quiet joy in the morning before I need to face the day, and all of the activities attached to it.

I used to consider myself a “night” person. I would stay up late until 2 or 3am reading or more likely painting. Somehow, over the years, that has shifted so that now I am toast if I stay up past 11. Now I am a morning person. It’s the same quiet: I love being immersed in the silence and serenity of the middle of the dark time, when most everyone is sleeping.

When my children were little I would find myself wandering the halls at all hours seeking some quiet joy with pencil or brush in hand. When my second daughter was born, I set-up my drawing table in the living room of our small home. The kitchen was on one side of the living room and the bedroom and nursery on the other side. I did a series of drawings that year in 1 to 5 minute increments, as I passed through the living room. Stolen moments of quiet joy in the midst of the activities of our home.

Joy of Work

“Where our work is, there let our joy be.” -Tertullian

Recently I have been blogging very little, because of lack of time to do these things that I love to do, that bring me joy as I work on them. About a month and a half ago my computer was hacked into by a trojan worm, and my computer went down for the 8 count. Just yesterday it came home to me, and they were able to retrieve some of the data.

I had been working for many months on a new project that I intended to launch very soon, in pursuit of my ideal work and money situation. None of the data for that survived. I’ve done a lot of praying throughout this whole journey, and I really “get” that it’s time for me to re-evaluate yet once more.

It seems the whole universe is shouting at me that I need learn how to receive, which includes allowing myself to give myself the room to pursue my dreams without guilt. To receive God’s blessings I must be willing to accept them. I’ve been one of the first, in my self-centered way, to cut my own legs out from under myself, even while I am asking for guidance through joy.

The Buddha said, “No one purifies another. Never neglect your work for another’s. However great his need, your work is to discover your work and then with all of your heart, to give yourself to it.”

Art, creativity, Spirit, clean graphics, inspired writing, singing, dancing, painting, drawing and capturing Goddess’s beauty through photography make my heart sing. They are my “vocation”, which comes from the Latin word for calling. My heart’s work is God calling me to pursue my joy so that I will fulfill that which I am most destined to contribute to the world. I know my work. It is time to give myself to it.

I have been reminded of these things many times in the last week, by key people in my closest circles and others. Sometimes, it seems, a message must be repeated over and over to me before I pay attention. I am grateful that it does get repeated.

So, this computer thing that I have experienced recently was like a cosmic two-by-four. OK. I am re-thinking. Seems I have spent a lot, A VERY LOT of time working with my nose to the grindstone for the last 6-7 months, only to reap no financial remuneration. There is something a-kilter here.

My conclusion: I must remember the joy. I must remember that God put me here and gave me gifts to honor and use in service to and for the highest good. That is a joyous experience.