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The Gift of Joy
There is a joyful persistence in play that I might do well to bring into my prayer. Children at play can be hard to budge (Ask any parent of a three-year-old!), not because they know longer is “better,” but because they are caught up in the joy of the work at hand, be it messy or even risky.
When I was young, we lived behind the convent and parish school. I loved to walk over after school on a crisp fall day and swing on the swings. I can still remember the delight when I figured out how to pump and could go higher and higher without anyone pushing me. It felt like flying. And there was the heady risk of it all. Would I bounce out of the swing? Would I go so high I would fly over the top bar? Could I stop without ruining the tops of my shoes? There is a wild joy to this sort of play.
Am I willing, I wonder, to abandon myself to such wild joy in prayer, to live with such a wild love of God that it infects those I meet?
—Excerpted from “Wild Joy” by Michelle Francl-Donnay
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