Let Joy Teach You

Yes, pain has taught you a thousand times.

The strength of your weary soul

A wild rose

Rooting down deep

Until it’s soft tendrils

Stretch up through the asphalt.

It hurts to push like that

But it’s what you have always done.

Yes pain has taught you a thousand times.

Sometimes a passionate clawing at the dirt.

A fierce tenacity to plant new seeds.

Sometimes a soft whimpering;

The brute of an army

To lift your body up from your bed

A fragile step towards the door

To feel sunshine on your face

When you thought there would never be sun again.

Yes pain has taught you a thousand times.

Your heart like a Phoenix.

It’s very ashes

That achingly burned

Became the sustenance

That brought you life.

Whose very death

Is what allowed you to rise.

That kind of suffering taught you

That often the medicine

Is in the pain itself.

But now you are learning something new.

That joy, it can be your teacher too.

That sun that you chose to step into

When you didn’t know if you could believe again

Your soul is starting to recognize

It’s constance.

It’s rising every day.

It’s tenacity to paint beautiful

The dusk and the dawn

No matter what happens

On the ground beneath it.

Even when you can’t see that earthly star,

It is always, always there.

While you are looking at the haze

Of what you think are merciless clouds

All the while, it is shining out immeasurable mercy.

It swallows up even the darkest shadow

While you are unaware.

So when joy comes softly

In the kiss of a lover

Or the embrace of a friend

Hold on a little longer

Just like you have held on a little longer

So many times.

Let it teach you

When joy comes like a fury

In bread broken around a table with friends

Laughter like bullets

Piercing darkness

Let it teach you.

When joy comes in a whisper…

A kindness to yourself

As you look in the mirror

And you choose to see

The wrinkles

The weight

The fading

As beauty etched from the strength of your days

Instead of a burden to bear

Swallow that joy up like water.

Let it teach you.

When joy comes in a letting go

Of controlling the past by regretting

Or controlling the future by worrying

When you see something beautiful

In this very moment

And you hold onto it’s gaze

Longer than you did last time

Enough to be here now

When you recognize that presence is not what you thought it was

A moment that you can never hold on to

But the truest moment that will never end…

When that joy comes

Let it sift you

Let it change you

And let it teach you

Yes pain has taught you

A thousand times

Now let joy teach you

A thousand times more.