Early this morning, I completed a very short but very beautiful meditation with Jeff Warren. It was entitled ‘kiss joy as it flies’. We meditated on the concept of not resisting change, on non-attachment to feelings, ‘good’ or ‘bad’ so we can experience joy (however transient it may be) that is around us.
He quoted William Blake’s wonderful poem Eternity:
He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy
He who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity’s sunrise
We’re coming to the end of blossom season here. I love how all the trees in our village come to life in all their pastel-pink glory each year.
Today as we walked to school, we walked through the blanket of petals on the pavement – equally as enchanting as the trees somehow – and as my girls danced around in them, more rained down on their heads like confetti.
And so, my busy morning was on pause. Just for a fleeting minute or so the trees and my children dazzled in the morning sunshine and I could feel the magic of it all.
I’m grateful we were early this morning; that we had the space to pause, to kiss the joy as it flew away from the trees and landed in our hair and on the pavement underneath our feet. Would I have felt this if I hadn’t had the reminder earlier on? I don’t know. I hope so.
The reality is that the carpet of petals is the sign that the blossom is already on its way. It is tempting to feel sad about that. But this morning that fresh carpet of petals was equally as beautiful as the trees in full bloom: Proving that there is joy in the transition too if we can trust that it will fly on by once more soon enough.