joy Archives - Mindfulness Association

Any Morning – William Stafford

Fay Adams — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 14:48:05 +0000

Just lying on the couch and being happy.
Only humming a little, the quiet sound in the head.
Trouble is busy elsewhere at the moment, it has
so much to do in the world.

People who might judge are mostly asleep; they can’t
monitor you all the time, and sometimes they forget.
When dawn flows over the hedge you can
get up and act busy.

Little corners like this, pieces of Heaven
left lying around, can be picked up and saved.
People won’t even see that you have them,
they are so light and easy to hide.

Later in the day you can act like the others.
You can shake your head. You can frown.

by William Stafford

Many of the poems that we feature here in this blog, that feel mindful, take us from the busy distracted mind towards moments of space, peace and presence. We need to be taken through this door, and poems are little doorways. This poem however, by Twentieth Century American poet William Stafford, begins in the luxuriation of a moment fully embraced – a ‘piece of heaven’, and then seems to concede to the inevitability of going back through the doorway into the melee of a busy mind and life.

Yet even though that necessity to return exists, because the fulsome early morning moment was deeply absorbed, might the day ahead feel just slightly different? The piece of heaven that was not ‘left lying around’ and was instead taken to heart may well live on clandestinely in the body as the poet gets up off the couch.

There’s something so particularly enticing about the way Stafford makes these moments feel contraband. Quiet little rebellions of mindfulness that are intimately secret. He encourages us to swim against the pervasive tide of doing, monitoring progress and conforming. He seems to be saying ‘Claim this moment as yours to enjoy, don’t give a care to what ‘they’ think. Let taking joy in the moment matter.’

Throughout the day I’m aware of many forks in the road. I can continue full pelt through the to do list and end the day frowning and rung out, or I can claim moments of appreciation for just being in between tasks and stay loyal to a human timescale, rather than a mechanical one. Might time be elastic? If I rebel against the urgency of getting on with it all, will I really end up regretting it and failing to keep up? I’ve been entering into the stealthy experiment of claiming these ‘little corners’ as gifts to myself for a couple of days now, and I feel enriched! There’s a gentle mirthful joy about it, like a serene smile with a wink. And my world hasn’t fallen apart yet.

Will you join in the experiment?

PS if you’d like to practice pausing and claiming ‘little corners’ of time and space alongside others, there’s a new Mindfulness level 1 course starting soon…

Photo by Laurence BL on Unsplash

For when people ask – Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Kristine Mackenzie-Janson — Mon, 04 Aug 2025 11:24:24 +0000

I want a word that means
okay and not okay,
a word that means
devastated and stunned with joy.
I want the word that says
I feel it all, all at once.
The heart is not like a songbird
singing only one note at a time,
more like a Tuvan throat singer
able to sing both a drone
and simultaneously
two or three harmonics high above it—
a sound, the Tuvans say,
that gives the impression
of wind swirling among rocks.
The heart understands the swirl,
how the churning of opposite feelings
weaves through us like an insistent breeze,
leads us wordlessly deeper into ourselves,
blesses us with paradox
so we might walk more openly
into this world so rife with devastation,
this world so ripe with joy.

by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

It’s always a bit of a process, choosing the next poem to explore here. Not only do I have to like it, but it has to be relevant for me at that time so I have something to say about it, I want to feel some alignment with the poet and I strive for a diversity in the selection, and I try not to share too many poems by the same poet. But that last one is not always easy with a poet as prolific as Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, who has a practice of sharing a poem a day and has done so since 2006. You can find all of her poems here, or click here to hear her read the above poem. So with the amount of Rosemerry-poems already in our list, another one wasn’t the most likely choice for today – but when I came across this one just yesterday and it named exactly how I felt, I couldn’t resist.

Being with the swirl of okay and not okay, with the heartbreak and the gladness of any given moment, is quite a thing! And it’s not easy to communicate or have space for the presence of such different ingredients in the same instant, in the same world… Yet I’m glad it’s possible, for the alternative is not very appealing: having only what’s not okay in the picture could easily lead to the heart closing into breakdown, and only letting in what’s ok might lead to a polyanna flavoured denying that also doesn’t serve us well. For the glass is not only half empty or half full, it’s both – I’m so glad to be alive and have a glass at all.

When there’s something strongly in the foreground of my experience, I often ask myself the question: “and what else is true?” Not to deny what I’m experiencing, but to open up into the fuller, wider experience of the moment, which frequently is a mixture of different ingredients. Making space for the mixture usually feels honest and true, and rich in a multidimensional kind of way – like a musical chord with a dissonant included, or a beautiful day in autumn that holds the last of the summer sunshine alongside the chill and decay of what’s to come. It may be that these are the moments I feel most alive, most real and open to the fullness of living. So here they are, all these feelings, swirling together… how precious to be living in the midst of it!

PS if you’d like to become more awake to what’s present inside, there’s a new Level 1 Mindfulness course starting soon, which helps us show up in the moment with all its different ingredients, living life fully!

Photo by charles hsiao on Unsplash

I will not regret love – Nikita Gill

Kristine Mackenzie-Janson — Mon, 06 Jan 2025 16:05:04 +0000

I will not regret love.
I will not regret hope.
I will not regret that I still
love the trees and the wind song.
That even through grief
I have found the world generous.
That even through ruin
I have found solace
in the blackbirds call.

by Nikita Gill

A strong, almost defiant poem here from the Irish-Indian writer and poet Nikita Gill. I like how she has embraced social media to share her poetry and how this makes her words current and het ability to respond through poetry to what happens in the world, almost instant.

It resonates with me as a powerful intention to keep expanding my perspective rather than getting sucked into one dominating storyline in my internal world or on the news. And I’m so grateful for the practice of mindfulness to support in doing so – the simple but powerful skill to notice what’s here and without denying or pushing away, find the wider view again and again.

Our colleague Heather often illustrates this by holding her thumbs (as a representative for what’s difficult in our experience) close to her eyes so it’s hard to see anything, and then stretching out her arms, the thumbs have not gotten any smaller but don’t dominate the whole visual field anymore. So yes, there’s grief and ruin, but also generosity and blackbirds, precious memories and current love.

Let’s stay hopeful as this new year is getting underway, and let’s continue to find the bigger picture…

PS if you’d like to access this (and other!) superpower(s) for yourself, join us in the next training of mindfulness – click here to see when that might be…

Photo by Jurjen Vos on Unsplash

Such Singing in the Wild Branches – Mary Oliver

Fay Adams — Thu, 16 Mar 2023 10:16:52 +0000

It was spring
and finally I heard him
among the first leaves –
then I saw him clutching the limb
in an island of shade
with his red-brown feathers
all trim and neat for the new year.
First, I stood still
and thought of nothing.
Then I began to listen.
Then I was filled with gladness –
and that’s when it happened,
when I seemed to float,
to be, myself, a wing or a tree –
and I began to understand
what the bird was saying,
and the sands in the glass
stopped
for a pure white moment
while gravity sprinkled upward
like rain, rising,
and in fact
it became difficult to tell just what it was that was singing –
it was the thrush for sure, but it seemed
not a single thrush, but himself, and all his brothers,
and also the trees around them,
as well as the gliding, long-tailed clouds
in the perfectly blue sky – all, all of them
were singing.
And, of course, yes, so it seemed,
so was I.
Such soft and solemn and perfect music doesn’t last
for more than a few moments.
It’s one of those magical places wise people
like to talk about.
One of the things they say about it, that is true,
is that, once you’ve been there,
you’re there forever.
Listen, everyone has a chance.
Is it spring, is it morning?
Are there trees near you,
and does your own soul need comforting?
Quick, then – open the door and fly on your heavy feet; the song
may already be drifting away.

by Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver’s poetry seems to me to take nature as an unmediated source of luminous spiritual experience. Some of the poems seem modest, restful and still, some are thoughtful and clear like mirrors and some dive arrestingly deep very suddenly.

This one however, seems to vibrate with the wonder-filled thrum of life. It explicitly invites us to slip quickly out through the always open door to find comfort in the great song of the natural world. Yes, we may have heavy feet – heavy feelings and a heavy life – and yes, the song may drift away even before we’ve fully remembered to love it. But there are also times when, like in this poem, we are given a moment of pure gold that will live in us forever, because we have remembered to love it in real time, right now. Not in retrospect and not half-felt and filtered through dense fences of thought, not with our mind elsewhere, but with all of us here. Then the great song can lift us with it too and we expand to know the infinite, ‘the world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower’ as Blake famously describes it.

‘…and does your own soul need comforting?’ Mine certainly does, as often as possible. Nature provides a very particular kind of comfort. It’s not like a warm duvet and a hot drink, it’s more like a teacher and restorer. It restores me to myself, and it sets me to rights by showing me the truest and most important lessons about the way of things.

PS. Do you long to drink from nature’s oasis? Come to our Mindfulness in Nature weekend at the end of May. In the midst of the city (or your home), we will soak up the presence of the earth and the wide sky, trees, flowers, insects, birds and humans. Perhaps here, with the help of mindfulness, you could touch the kinds of experience that Mary Oliver writes of.

Photo by Rob Mulally on Unsplash

The Lost Words Blessing – Various Artists

Fay Adams — Tue, 23 Aug 2022 15:33:14 +0000

Enter the wild with care, my love
And speak the things you see
Let new names take and root and thrive and grow
And even as you travel far from heather, crag and river
May you like the little fisher, set the stream alight with glitter
May you enter now as otter without falter into water

Look to the sky with care, my love
And speak the things you see
Let new names take and root and thrive and grow
And even as you journey on past dying stars exploding
Like the gilded one in flight, leave your little gifts of light
And in the dead of night my darling, find the gleaming eye of starling
Like the little aviator, sing your heart to all dark matter

Walk through the world with care, my love
And sing the things you see
Let new names take and root and thrive and grow
And even as you stumble through machair sands eroding
Let the fern unfurl your grieving, let the heron still your breathing
Let the selkie swim you deeper, oh my little silver-seeker
Even as the hour grows bleaker, be the singer and the speaker
And in city and in forest, let the larks become your chorus
And when every hope is gone, let the raven call you home.

These are some of the most beautiful words I’ve read and listened to in recent years. On the Lost Words website it says their intention is to ‘Sing nature back to life through the power of poetry, art and music’. The beauty becomes deeply melancholy against the backdrop of loss which is behind the project. I recommend listening to the song while mindfully resting in the body. If it speaks to you, you may experience a firework display of tingles…

These words bring deep recognition for me – it’s a recognition of the wonder of the natural world and a recognition of my own profound care for it. I feel as if I’m tied to it by a thousand golden threads of love. These golden threads gleam against a backdrop of tragedy though. In earlier years my love of nature felt innocent and joyful, now it feels more like the threads are entwined all through with heartbreak. The Lost Words book itself came into being as a response to many nature words, such as acorn, kingfisher and wren, being removed from a widely used children’s dictionary in the UK – an ominous symptom of the times we live in.

Mindfulness, poetry and the arts in general are all ways to remember the golden threads with which we are bound together into nature. The poem-song plays with this inseparability by letting us momentarily feel that we are the starling singing its heart out, an otter slipping into water, a goldfinch in flight or a selkie swimming deeper into the depths. A fern unfurling is used as a metaphor for grief. Aren’t the spirals within spirals in the photo above exquisite? Have you ever felt grief to be like that? And, ‘Let the heron still your breathing’ – have you ever experienced this kind of stillness when in the company of nature?

I believe that we must keep our hearts as alive to the natural world and as intimate with it as we can. This is key at this historical moment – as it says on the website, ‘…what we do not love we will not save’.

The Lost Words Blessing offers in its last lines the most shattering invitation – ‘when every hope is gone, let the raven call you home’. Even in a time when we feel the future is threatened, the eternal refuge of nature as our home is always here.

The Lost Words Blessing was cocreated by a group of artists all named here:

Kerry Andrew

Kris Drever

Julie Fowlis

Seckou Keita

Robert MacFarlane

Jim Molyneux

Jackie Morris

Rachel Newton

Karine Polwart

Beth Porter

Ps. If you too want to keep your connection to nature alive and wonder about how you might be part of saving what you love, check out the upcoming Engaged Mindfulness course here.

Photo by Agathe on Unsplash