Joyous Gard: Daily Guide Archives and Text
April 2008 ~ Day 23 Art and Morality
if there is a bad sign of the world’s temper just now, it is that men will listen to politicians, scientists, men of commerce, and journalists, because these can arouse a sensation, or even confer material benefits; but men will not listen to poets, because they have so little use for the small and joyful thoughts that make up some of the best pleasures of life.
-- Art and Morality, Joyous Gard
Small pleasures: sitting in the still of my home, hearing the faint sounds of a child’s program from a television in another room, seeing my dog curled up in her bed and thinking that I’m the luckiest man in the world.
And so my prayer:
With children who’ve won my heart, a beautiful wife who is my strength and friends who are my laughter, what more is there, O Lord, but this: that you would give me the mind to think this thought and reach back in time so to gather my memories that I might again have this single moment of joy.
Day 23 Guide
What is it, my friend, that might give you a moment’s pause? Distracted as you are by the things that have no real voice, you must, at times, break away. Quicken your mind by relaxing your thoughts of things immediate and listen instead to the sounds from afar.
© 2008, Levi Hill
Joyous Gard: Daily Guide Archives and Text
February 2008 ~ Day 25 Art
The following contains excerpts from the February 24th Wall Street Journal article, "The Choreographer on Why He Makes Dances."
Choreographer Paul Taylor says this of his art: "I make dances because I can't help it."
It's a wonderful compulsion, isn't it: to create. And it's purely a human urge. No other animal has the need for artistic creativity.
Listen further to what Paul Taylor says of his profession: "From childhood on, I've been a reticent guy who spends a lot of time alone. I make dances in an effort to communicate to people."
We humans have a need to communicate, to share our feelings, our memories and our knowledge. When something makes us feel good we want others to know about it. And there are times when words seem almost helpless to convey such a feeling.
Taylor goes on to say that art -- in his case, dance -- is a universal language: "I love tinkering with natural gesture and pedestrian movement to make them read from a distance and be recognizable as a revealing language that we all have in common."
Paul Taylor Dance Company: http://www.ptdc.org/
Day 25 Guide
The artist conveys simple ideas of love and beauty and hope. His language is interpreted by the heart. He moves the spirit and encourages us to live. But the noise of a busy world often deafens us to his call. Stop, my friend. Push yourself to listen, look and wait for the ideas that are bound in art.
© Levi Hill, 2008
Joyous Gard: Daily Guide Archives and Text
January 2008 ~ Day 2 Poetry and Life
Swirls in the Mix
During the Christmas holidays my wife was determined to make a particular chocolate treat that was featured in Southern Living magazine. Determined, I say, because she didn’t give up after I bought the wrong type of chocolate at the grocery store. She tried to improvise using what I bought to create the same beautiful, swirling chocolate treats that she saw in the pictures. But it didn’t work. The recipe called for chocolate bars not the chocolate chips that I bought. Undiscouraged though, she trashed the failed first attempt and immediately set her mind on getting the Ghirardelli chocolate bars herself. Knowing exactly what she needed, my wife was off to grocery store
The recipe uses both dark and white chocolate squares laid out carefully in a checker board pattern on a cookie sheet lined with non-stick parchment paper. Heated for only a short time in the oven, the individual squares melt and bond themselves together forming a solid black and white checker-board. And that’s when the fun begins.
While the chocolate is still hot and gooey, use a toothpick to make random swirls in the checker-board. Let the artist in you come out and watch as the curves of white and dark chocolate intersect the straight lines of the squares, creating the wonderful holiday merger. Sprinkle chopped pecans on the chocolate before it cools and you’re done -- but for one last step. Just like peanut brittle, the cool chocolate must be broken, leaving the wonderful patterns of lines and curves on the individual pieces. They’re almost too pretty to eat.
Day 2 Guide
How do you open the pathways to beauty? Are you determined? Make it your plan this year to elevate the importance of unlocking the treasures of Joyous Gard.
© 2008, Levi Hill
Joyous Gard: Daily Guide Archives and Text
December 2007 ~ Day 28 Poetry
A Man’s Word
I enjoy the rhythm of Christmas. Things in my world slow down this time of year, and I welcome the change of pace. Yesterday, I had the pleasure of spending some time with my friend Roy, a man nearly twenty years my senior whose spirit for living and good sense of humor make him young at heart. I mostly listened as Roy told me about this career as a mechanic and machinist. Having visited with my father earlier that same morning, Roy told me, “I’ve never met a person who had a negative thing to say about your father. He’s earned a real good reputation over the years. I think a lot of that man. My mother was that way, too. Everybody loved her.”
As we talked, Roy told me about his years in the cotton mills and in production with various industrial plants. He told me about the bosses he’d had over the years and the various trials he faced. Indirectly, Roy was telling me about his philosophy of work: the responsibilities, as he saw them, of a worker, the importance of the quality of one’s work and the sacred nature of a man’s word. Roy easily admitted his failings and shortcomings but then never apologized for holding on to his beliefs of fairness and honesty. If anything, Roy, I believe, is a man of a word. And maybe that’s what Roy was trying to answer about himself as he recounted his days in the workforce: Had he earned a good reputation over the years? What would people say about him in later years?
It’s been said that behind every good man is a strong woman. And I know that to be the case with Roy. It is my sense that over the years, his wife Linda, who I’ve known for as long as I can remember, has given him a needed sense of love, stability and safety at home. I believe that his marriage, his children, and the prayers offered up for him have been Roy’s refuge and his strength. They have been his Joyous Gard, the castle whose walls have protected the very reputation he sought to earn.
Day 28 Guide
Think about those who’ve held, protected and cared for you over the years. Think about those you love and those who’ve loved you, for it is through relationships that we earn the most important things.
© 2007, Levi Hill
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