As I go through my day, I watch for moments when the corners of my mouth turn up and my heart lifts. I note these moments of delight in my journal and consider their patterns here. I encourage you to be on the lookout for your Delight of the Day.
I have been enriched by hearing others’ stories this week.
A friend of mine sent me her book, Living Water, Living Stories: African-American Women and Their Biblical Sisters and also invited me to a Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration to meet some of the women featured in the book. I had just watched (at my 17-year-old daughter’s insistence) Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED talk, “The danger of a single-story.” I was open in a new way to hear the stories of these women who live not far, geographically speaking, from me.
Geography becomes unimportant. Between the lives of these sisters and mine is a huge gulf filled with the murkiness of race and class in 21st century America. Added to the pother is my life as a person with disability. It is easy for me to feel ashamed for being white and middle-class and in a wheelchair. What do I have to say to these women? How dare I even approach them?
I wish I could tell you I had significant conversation with them but, of course, I didn’t. I thanked them for their courage in telling their stories out loud and then went away. But my life has been enriched by them and I go forward changed and tenderly conscious of the knives that separate us and the strands that draw us together.
Other delights this week include:
A morning of alchemical painting
Delving into Adichie’s book, Americanah
Being featured in a news story
A visit from a friend
My meditation teacher’s new Daily Dharma talks
Choosing to turn off the TV
May you find delight in each day.
