Meri's Musings

I am  a closet romantic  morning chai drinker bibliophile connoisseur of the ordinary sacred

What gives me JOY? Spring flowers  with all  their ruffles  and flourishes. p.s. Negative for pneumonia -- just horrible bronchitis, flu, and sinus infection, day 9. What gives you JOY? To play along and share the joy: 1. do a post that tells and shows us what gives you joy. 2. capture the URL of the specific post  and paste it into the  Mr. Linky box  along with your name. 3. visit other players -- as many as possible --  and let their joy infect you.   Leave them a comment about their post. Let's start an epidemic of joy!

I'm road kill on the viral highway of life this week. Temp above 100 and an impressive cough. So I'm not feeling especially JOYFUL myself. But I'm hoping to benefit from your joy. What's on your JOY list? To play along and share the joy: 1. do a post that tells and shows us what gives you joy. 2. capture the URL of the specific post  and paste it into the  Mr. Linky box  along with your name. 3. visit other players -- as many as possible --  and let their joy infect you.   Leave them a comment about their post. Let's start an epidemic of joy!

What inspired JOY in me this week? Using my talents to help a project I believe in, one that will benefit the art museum and the community as a whole. We're working on a redesign of the entry areas, plus partnering with the city to make the downtown corridor more pedestrian-friendly, beautiful and welcoming. Hearing the latest Logan-isms from my son, his daddy. Scheduling studio time to work with encaustics. How about you? What's on your JOY list? To play along and share the joy: 1. do a post that tells and shows us what gives you joy. 2. capture the URL of the specific post  and paste it into the  Mr. Linky box  along with your name. 3. visit other players -- as many as possible --  and let their joy infect you.   Leave them a comment about their post. Let's start an epidemic of joy!

What's on my JOY list today? 1. the smell of melted beeswax for encaustic work 2. the heft of a hardback book in my hands,    especially one so well-written and engaging that    I can't wait to turn the page. 3. seeing blue in the sky amongst the clouds 4. watching sunlight bounce off water -- in the pond behind my house or     in the harbor in my quaint little town -- or anywhere, for that matter 5.  knowing that I'm infected once again with the     creative writing virus  after being in the doldrums Yippee!  What's on your JOY list? To play along and share the joy: 1. do a post that tells and shows us what gives you joy. 2. capture the URL of the specific post  and paste it into the  Mr. Linky box  along with your name. 3. visit other players -- as many as possible --  and let their joy infect you.   Leave them a comment about their post. Let's start an epidemic of joy! ...

What gives me JOY? A feeling of sufficiency with regard to basic needs. Books to read and a mug of something warm to drink. Walking at the place where water and land meet. Stumbling across evidence that love still thrives. There are endless sources of JOY, and at least A Thousand Beautiful Things to celebrate. Won't you spend a little time looking for JOY and sharing it with us? To play along: 1. do a post that tells and shows us what gives you joy. 2. capture the URL of the specific post  and paste it into the  Mr. Linky box  along with your name. 3. visit other players -- as many as possible --  and let their joy infect you.   Leave them a comment about their post. Let's start an epidemic of joy!

© 2010 Meri Arnett-Kremian Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity... © 2010 Meri Arnett-Kremian It turns problems into  gifts, failures into success, the unexpected into perfect timing, and mistakes into important events. Retablo (photograph © 2010 Meri Arnett-Kremian) Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow. Melody Beattie Image © 2010 Meri Arnett-Kremian     

Joy is a choice you make. It's an attitude of celebration and thankfulness for  little moments of  awe or ahhhh......... and wonderful memories like the trips to France that speak to your soul. Sometimes it's overwhelming. Sometimes it just sits quietly waiting for you to notice and say, "Oh - here you are!" Where's the joy in your life today? It's usually marked with a smile. Won't you share it with us? (And don't forget to visit the beautiful and gracious NOELLE to wish her a Happy Birthday.) To play along: 1. do a post that tells and shows us what gives you joy. 2. capture the URL of the specific post and paste it into the Mr. Linky box along with your name. 3. visit other players -- as many as possible -- and let their joy infect you.  Leave them a comment about their post. Let's start an epidemic of joy!

December can be a hard time for many people,  who keenly feel their life losses  at a time  when they expect to feel nothing  but joy and celebration.  Instead of expecting holiday times to be a perpetual  infusion of happiness, we should learn to  identify  small,  fleeting moments of joy  in everyday things -- a stranger's smile a surprise meeting with a friend an outrageous pair of tennis shoes finding a quote that resonates with our soul seeing a beautiful thing in a store window hearing a song that reminds us of falling in love the hummingbird unexpectedly hovering near a window and not wait for the staccato  and flash of fireworks  and the shushing sounds of angel wings to signal joy's arrival. For if we wait for the ruffles and flourishes to tell us it's time to take notice, we will have missed a thousand little episodes of joy.  That would be a damn shame. And for those of us who write,  we must...