Joy and Sadness…A Holy Paradox

This morning, when I wake to this beautiful day, I can’t help but notice an increasingly familiar sense of “opposites” growing inside of me. I feel profound gratitude and joy on one shoulder and a sort of sadness on the other.

I have so many on my prayer list right now…those who have lost a child, a family friend with two small children dying of cancer, friends with ill parents, children who are seeing joy and suffering each day and becoming aware of the reality of living.

Yet, I awaken and look out my window and the sun is coming over the pines and I smell coffee brewing in the kitchen. I am filled with gratitude.

So, I go to Gratefulness.org this morning to search for a poem or reflection to send to my cousin who just lost one of her twin babies and sits with the other in intensive care. I find a reflection which says that “prayer” comes from the same Latin root word as “precarious.” In this sense, prayer is not a request. Rather, it is reconnecting with the very Source from which we come. We open our eyes to the heart of everything.

So, I smell coffee, I hear the purr of my cat and in a moment, I feel grief. I read: “We come to see these twins, grief and joy, as playing with each other, teaching each other, caring for each other. A sudden gladness can unexpectedly shine forth in a time of great sorrow.”

The point is that a fully lived life turns from neither–we stand at the altar of grief with someone in body or spirit and in the same flickering moment, we feel abundant gratitude and joy for creation itself.

I suppose this is why I love the Enneagram. It is imbued with paradox. Right in the center of the Gluttony of my mind, lies the Constancy of my heart. For my friend, a Two, right in the deflation of Pride is the power of the Humility which offers her a taste of sweet surrender that she can’t be all things to all people and her call is to come home to herself.

For my friend, a Six, when Fear or uncertainty threatens to overwhelm her, smack dab in the middle of it is Faith and Courage and she remembers that she has held ground again and again.

For my friend, a Three struggling day by day with the forward movement that can propel her to the great Successful Accomplishment, she finds in the middle of this crazy Deceit that tells her she is what she does, a sliver of the light of Hope which was inside her all along that reminds her that her life light is not contingent upon a high profile win.

For my husband and daughter, Nines on the Enneagram, the self-forgetting of their least favorite word, Sloth, is the very quality that will spur them to Right Action as they remember the wonder of themselves.

And so on. You can write your own paradox as it is embedded in the fabric of your being. It is the old friend who reminds you again and again, you are an emanation of the Source of Life.

Paradox…we defend and project in our own way, don’t we? We find such creative ways to resist both authentic radiance and the “not-so-distant” wailing of a wounded world. A full life includes both, doesn’t it?