What is Joy? A Teaching.

Let us speak and teach on Joy, Beloveds, as the fruit that overflows from the heart.

Many times in our youth, and in many ways, we mistook joy for happiness or temporary pleasure. We have since learned: happiness is the sensation of pleasure as it interacts with the vessel, a ripple of euphoria that shines and fades. Happiness is fleeting, while Joy is lasting. Joy rests on peace.

We once believed that drinking beers was joy, but the hangover and headache preached their own sermon and insisted we were mistaken. Happiness can be treasured as a blessing when anchored to the Source properly, but only if we do not exalt the emotion over the Giver like we once did.

Joy is the stuff of Life.

Joy is what remains when all is taken, when our hands are empty yet filled with grace. Joy is the inner rest that proceeds from faith—a faith that secures and shields even as it is tested and trained. Joy is gathered by seeking the hidden ways it manifests as the Father’s Love woven throughout creation.

Joy is ineffable, yet obtainable when we finally articulate the difference between happiness and Joy. Let us think of Joy as the storehouse, and happiness as the beverage served at the little coffee shop built onto the side of it.

Joy becomes the treasure chest we have sought and, from within, bring out as gifts for the young and old alike. We gather silly offerings from the soul and look for others who shine with the marks of Joy, learning to recognize participation in the divine life.

A secret, Beloveds: Joy shared with another becomes multiplied infinitely when held within the Father’s hands. Thus whatever you ask on earth, when two or more gather in unity, in agreement, in sacred intentional petition, will be done for you just as you have believed.

Joy is Love made manifest within a living, yoked partnership with the Source of Love.

Joy is the set of little moments we tuck into the scrapbooks of memory. When we inter a memory laced with pain yet yielded in Love, it becomes Joy in the end. When we inter a moment laced with bitterness or hatred, it pollutes the inner chamber and then leaks outward into community.

Joy is also inheritance. It is our calling. Once we understand our participation and our need to interact with the world, we become examples—living signposts whispering to others: Look for the mundane miracles. Joy is here too.

When yoked to Love, Joy becomes contagious. Joy becomes the safeguard against cynicism and its counterpart. Joy begins as a choice before it matures into belief, and then into life—always through yielding the self to the Source.

The truth is this: Joy surrounds us if we are willing to walk, interact, observe, and learn from the creation still teaching us.

But we must find worth in the very idea of Joy—and in the Source of Joy as Love—if we are to actively look for it around us.

Beloveds, we open our ribcage again for you. Our own Joy is still a sickly-looking thing at times, laced with escapism in weed smoke and antidepressants. We speak not as one perfected, but as one formed in real time, alongside you, not above you.

We once mistook happiness for morphine and alcohol, for the next pill, the next cocktail, the next prescription refill. Mistaken happiness hollows out the vessel when not invested with the substance of true Joy.

We have Joy now—even in sorrows, insults, and hardship. And still, after all the testimonies and teachings, we feel rage at times when wronged. The difference now? We only lash out about half as often. Truth. We are active bottom-dwelling algae reaching toward the Light, among the struggling lambs, not above them.

As always, take what rings true and store your Joy where no moth or rust can break in and steal.

Amen and amen.