I watched the TV show called Junior Master Chef with a bit of trepidation. I didn’t want it to be so competitive I would feel sorry for the kids, and I didn’t want to see them act like adults either.
It wasn’t and they didn’t. Instead, I spent an hour laughing, giggling, and tearing over the exuberant joy each child demonstrated.
Their ages ranged from age 8 to 13. Even the youngest came with skills most of us adults would envy. They came with expressive joy. They came with their unique spiritual blessing shining out so completely that it would be impossible to forget a single one of them.
They congratulated each other; they comforted each other, while still excelling in their unique expression without apology. They were literally Love and Intelligence and Creativity in action.
Why would years take that away? Isn’t a unique expression of joy an inborn and innate quality for each of us? Why would we suppress this joy? Do we think that we will appear foolish or not business like enough?
Recently Del and I watched Robin Williams doing an interview for his new show. Yes, he is funny, but it’s his exuberant, childlike, unapologetic, joy of life that is contagious.
These qualities shine forth in the cardinal sitting silently on my deck while watching over his female companion. They bubble over with the chickadees who let me know the food in their feeder is low, and sing their thanks to me as I fill it again.
They are evident in the older Russian woman, who just barely speaks English, as she takes Del’s Tai Chi class, the first thing she has done just for herself in her life, her daughter tells us.
Aren’t these qualities the qualities of Love in action? Aren’t they the substance of Life itself, seen in its unlimited unique forms as trees, people, atoms, stars, flowers, birds, etc.
We don’t have to create these qualities for ourselves. They already exist, we are simply taking the lid off of them and letting them breathe and live in our lives.
This will look different for each of us. Some of us may be like the child on Master Chef who couldn’t stop exploding with excitement, and others of us may be as still as the dew on a blade of grass, shimmering with the reflection of the beauty of the Divine.
In this month of October, the Seneca Indians celebrate the quality of creativity. We know that God is the only cause, and the only creator. This is a joy-filled idea as it releases us from trying to be creative, and into simply being creative as the outpouring, in our own unique way, of the humanly unimaginable creativity of the infinite Mind.
Each day overflows with evidence of this fact. We, who do not raise the sun or hold up the stars, should also know that we do not create, but express creativity. Who could not feel his exuberant, childlike, unapologetic, joy with this awareness?
Our expression of this is abundance for others, as theirs is for us. Recognizing this, we would never feel jealous, or the desire to control, or the need to fix anyone. Instead, it would free us to feel the Oneness of God throbbing through the dance of life.
Each of us in our timing, our own rhythm, our own unique expression of the divine, weave together in a tapestry symbolizing the wholeness, and infinite expression of Life. Open the gates of your life – and like the turtle, this months’ animal, move through every moment of life with the slow and steady confidence of exuberant, childlike, unapologetic, joy.