Day 7, Bliss

a poem a day in the month of may

Friends,

Today’s word is bliss.

Bliss is a moment of complete happiness or utter joy.

Before we brush this off or scoff at it, thinking that it’s an impossible reality for so many people, I want us to see bliss as a spiritual practice, especially in turbulent times.

I remember a month or two ago sitting at a coffee shop in Philly, working away when I simply paused to look out the huge window that was in front of me. I became totally aware of that window, of my coffee, of the simple gift of life.

I even wrote a poem that very moment.

Looking out a coffee shop window 

My god, did you feel that?
A shifting of the foundations,
A chest nearly bursting,
A heart on fire, a
River overflowing.

Nothing could have prepared
Me for this moment and nothing 
Will ever meet its magic again,
So here, I sit and take in what
Is nearly impossible to hold:
The generosity of being human,
Of knowing what it feels like to be
Tenderly, fiercely, alive.

That was it. The bliss wasn’t eternal; I moved on with my day, and in fact moved into spaces of grief and exhaustion, too. This is the dance of being human.

Can’t wait to read your poems.

Photo by Greg Rosenke on Unsplash

Photo by De'Andre Bush on Unsplash

Photo by Johen Redman on Unsplash

I can get a lot from
scrolling social media
but bliss isn’t high on
the list—outrage, calls
for justice, call outs and
calls in are what I find there.

No, bliss exists somewhere
else, in the red chair tucked 
into the corner of my office
where I journal and read,
where I don’t try to escape
but I try to dig deeper, my
roots plunging into the soil
of my soul until they find
that little bit of water they
need to keep going.

Bliss, this moment of
pure awareness, my breath
deep and steady, my mind
calmed before its storm
rises up again, my belly
settled and quiet because
there is nothing to be anxious
about right now.

This moment is it, and I cherish
it exactly because it won’t last—
bliss never does, and that’s the 
whole point, isn’t it?

A bliss is a snapshot of the purest
thing we can imagine, the joy
that goes beyond reason and the
contentment that only visits us
when we are sure that it is okay
to be human, that it’s okay to exist 
in sacred liminality, that it’s okay to visit
the quiet in the chaos and stay
there until we feel prepared to
re-enter the world that waits outside
our closed doors.