On the Journey, May: Joy

The May issue of "On the Journey" has arrived! HERE

We'll be exploring JOY. Don't miss it, and don't miss your Journey Group meeting to get together to work with this issue!

This month's the spiritual exercise is making a list. Be sure to look at that exercise and bring your list with you to your Journey Group.

Five excellent TED talks are listed. You'll want to see them!

Questions, p. 9:

1. What is joy? What is its relationship to happiness? What feelings and images come to mind
when you think of the word “joy”?
2. What, in your life now, gives you joy?
3. What brought you joy when you were a child? Is that source of joy gone? Has it evolved?
4. What is the relationship between joy and sorrow?
5. What will be your legacy of joy to the generations that follow yours?
6. What regular habits and practices might create more joyfulness in your heart, home and
community?
7. How much joy do you really want? If you could choose what percentage of your waking
hours for the next four weeks will be filled with ecstatic bliss, what would you choose? What are you
doing to bring your experience closer to the percentage you chose?
8. Think of some moments when you felt most alive. Does there seem to be a connection
between aliveness and joy?
9. If 50% of your happiness comes from your genetic “set point,” how cheerful by nature would
you say you are? If 10% of your happiness comes from circumstances, how do your circumstances rate
these days? If 40% of your happiness comes from what you do and think, how are you doing in this
area?
10. How do you experience the connection between creativity and joy?
11. Kahlil Gibran says, “Your joy is your sorrow unmasked....The deeper that sorrow carves
into your being, the more joy you can contain.” How do you experience the connection
between joy and sorrow? Some say that your openness to (capacity to take in and not push
away) joy is equal to your openness to grief or pain. Does this seem true?
12. Is joy for you a solitary or communal experience?

The link to the current and all past issues of On the Journey can always be found at cucmatters.org/p/journey-groups.htm