Blessed are the men and women who are planted on Your earth in Your garden, Who grow as Your trees and flowers grow, who transform their darkness to light. Their roots plunge into darkness; their faces turn toward the light. All those who love You are beautiful; they overflow with Your presence so that they can do nothing but good. There is infinite space in Your garden; all men, all women are welcome here; all they need do is enter.
Because in trying to articulate what, perhaps, joy is, it has occurred to me that among other things—the trees and the mushrooms have shown me this—joy is the mostly invisible, the underground union between us, you and me, which is, among other things, the great fact of our life and the lives of everyone and thing we love going away. If we sink a spoon into that fact, into the duff between us, we will find it teeming. It will look like all the books ever written. It will look like all the nerves in a body. We might call it sorrow, but we might call it a union, one that, once we notice it, once we bring it into the light, might become flower and food. Might be joy.
