The Resolute Woman

Category: happiness

  • Wisdom from Emily Dickinson

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    “I’ll tell you how the sun rose a ribbon at a time,” Emily Dickinson wrote. In another poem, she said, “The moon was but a chin of gold a night or two ago.” And, one autumn day, Emily observed, “The morns are meeker than they were, the nuts are getting brown; the berry’s cheek is…

  • Do you have time to be unhappy?

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    In her book Everyday Sacred, author Sue Bender talks about Helen, a woman whose home was destroyed by fire. “The fire forced me to look at what really matters,’ Helen told Sue. When one of Helen’s neighbors who also had lost her home started spending a lot of time complaining, Helen told her, “I don’t…

  • It’s time to play

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    In his book Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination and Invigorates the Soul, Dr. Christopher Vaughan advises us to spend more time playing. Play, he says, is whatever you love to do, and spending more time doing what you love to do will improve your work and your relationships. “There isn’t any…

  • The power of fantasy

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    When my children were younger, they sometimes asked for the impossible. I remember one summer when they both decided that they wanted to go to Six Flags Over Texas and they wanted to go immediately. Because I was a single mother on a limited budget, my first reaction was to feel sad. I don’t remember…

  • Happy summer!

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    The temperature reached 100 degrees in Dallas County on June 24 at exactly 4:55 p.m.—with more 100 degree days in the forecast. Summer has arrived! My dog Ginger, who loves to stay in the backyard keeping watch over the squirrels, is ready for an early morning walk—and perfectly content to spend the afternoon sleeping next…

  • Joy vs. happiness

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    In his book Aging Well, Dr. George Vaillant tells about a visit with George Emerson. “I could only sit back and marvel at this 76-year-old man,” Dr. Valliant writes. “Despite severe asthma, devastating leukemia and hands so arthritic that he could no longer write, Emerson had been out sailing competitively for a state trophy he…

  • Joy and service

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    Service is a part of life that is connected to joy, says James Martin in his book Between Heaven and Mirth: Why Joy, Humor and Laughter Are at the Heart of Spiritual Life. Martin quotes the Indian writer and Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore, who wrote: “I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke…

  • “A hidden smile from within”

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    We’ve just read a delightful book by the Jesuit priest James Martin—Between Heaven and Mirth: Why Joy, Humor and Laughter Are at the Heart of the Spiritual Life. The book is filled with reminders about the importance of humor and laughter in our lives. Of course, Martin reminds us that we’re not supposed to be…

  • Happy spring!

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    I saw some daffodils in the grocery store today and couldn’t resist buying them. I smiled and felt a little happier when I arrived home and put them on the kitchen table. As the Bible says in the Song of Solomon 2:12 (English Standard Version), “The flowers appear on the earth, the time of singing…

  • The never-quite-satisfied

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    At the her brother’s wedding, the main character in Ann Packer’s short story Things Said and Done describes how, as a child, her father “conferred specialness” on her and how she “was to breathe only the rarefied air of the never-quite-satisfied.” It was, she concludes, not the best preparation for life or for her marriage.…