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Joyous Gard: Daily Guide Archives and Text
July 2008 ~ Day 14 Education

School Days, School Days

I wasn’t much one for school. I enjoyed the people. I even liked some of the classes. But not the homework -- and especially not the tests and exams. I don’t think I was really cut out for testing. Too much pressure. My stomach would always get tied in knots on the day of a test or an exam.

And I never liked it when a teacher would try to scare me by talking about how things would be out in “the real world.” With a stomach tied in knots I hated to hear that I wasn't already in the real world.

I was never one of those people who could stay up late at night studying. If I didn’t have it before 12 midnight, my mind and body would say “to heck with it” and check out. I didn’t like morning deadlines either. They left me no time to finish what I’d left undone the night before.

Despite my general distaste for school, I always knew it was good for me. And besides, what else would I have been doing with my time? Good education best serves youth, whose minds aren't yet closed and whose attitudes are generally more accepting.

One thing I’ve discovered as I’ve aged: the “real world” my teachers were refering to (life as a working adult) is in some ways less real than the world I imagined when I was a boy. And I find it a shame that teachers don’t give more credit to children whose minds aren’t yet so hardened to the world.

I think it’s why thoughts tend towards the memories I’ve recorded. By thinking back, I’m able to rekindle the flames of a time when my thoughts were unrestricted -- when I saw nothing but opportunity. You remember those times, don’t you? Turn on the music, sweet Lord. Help me remember.

Day 14 Guide

Don’t’ forget the times when you saw opportunity, when around every corner there was a welcome surprise, not a disappointment. It’s what we need today: clear thinking.

Joyous Gard: Daily Guide Archives and Text
July 2008 ~ Day 9 Interpretation

Another

Time passes before me, hiding in its wake those things that would please my soul. But on this midsummer morn I found in the eyes of another all that I’d wanted to be: alive, in love and at peace with my God.

Day 9 Guide

The cares of life are walls that withhold treasure. Search in the eyes of another the life outside your own.

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.

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.

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	The winds and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators. -- Gibbon July 24 2008