The Mark of Joy
"The sure trademark of a contemporary saint is not a halo, it's mirth. As a form of happiness, mirth is 'rejoicing, especially expressed in merrymaking.' Rejoicing is a work project whose end product is being merry. It's not merry in the sense of being jolly. Rather, it's more the Old English sense of merie as found in the carol, 'God Rest ye merry, gentlemen.' Notice the comma in that song and then read the olden-days meaning of merry: blessed, pleasant or peaceful. Merry England was, indeed, blessed, peaceful England. A merry woman or man is a peaceful blesser. A blesser is a person who happily goes about making everything blessed simply by his or her presence. This act of enchantment is done naturally and almost unconsciously by those living in the Kingdom of God. This process of becoming a blesser begins with the healing of their eyes. Blessers bless by seeing what exists beneath the crust of the common, which then causes them to handle everything with wonder and delight. In turn, their out-of-the ordinary behavior can awaken the sleep-closed eyes of others to the magnificent, mystical, ever present reality of the sacred.
"Those becoming Godlike can't hide their private lives. They tend to look like a man who has just won a ten-million dollar lottery or a woman who has discovered an original Picasso painting buried in an old trunk of junk she has just purchased at a garage sale. One of the infallible signs of someone who has found the Reign of God here and now is that they're always smiling."
