"Joy is not the same as happiness. Happiness depends on what happens. Happiness is a Porsche with a stereo stopping for you just when it started raining. Joy may rise in the midst of a thunderstorm with not a car to be seen. Happiness is finding a wallet full of twenty-dollar notes with no identification in it. Joy could hit you as you give your last five dollars to a lovable rogue with an unlikely story. Happiness is the preserve of the lucky, the wealthy, and the successful. Joy belongs to any who find it, and the poor seem to find more of it than most.
"Sometimes if you twang a note on a guitar, you can make a string on a different guitar vibrate. It's called resonance. Joy is when your heart picks up the vibrations of God and, for a brief period of time, beats in harmony; when your love echoes God's love; when your gift resonates with God's. There are moments when you see the funny side of life through God's eyes, and then you just laugh and laugh and laugh. People think you're crazy, because there's no obvious reason to be cracking up; it's just that you've seen the cosmic joke once more.
"At other times it's just a deep warm glow; a long slow lingering orgasm of well-being. It floods up through you like a warm delicious flush. It makes your eyes shine. In fact you can pick people in a state of joy, because even if they are crippled with arthritis, their eyes glisten like jewels. Joy is a state of intense aliveness. The more your heart melds with God's, the more often joy erupts. The more joy, the higher you get, and the further you can see into the distance. Joyful people are good guides to the heartland.
"But joy can be elusive. The more you seek it, the more it flees away. Joy cannot be bought or sold, and will not be preserved. Those who chase it for the buzz of it find themselves with sore face muscles from trying to fake it. A devoted eighty-year-old couple may find more joy in cutting each other's toenails than two young sexual athletes squeeze out of a whole night of frantic position-changing. You grasp for it and it is gone. You open your hand to feel the rain and your heart leaps. Joy is like a homing beacon — it keeps you on track. If you lose it, you know you've wandered off the path somewhere. It's not a constant hum — more like an intermittent beep to let you know you're doing okay. Joy is the sort of harmonic that is produced by tuning your life to your Lover. When it rings in your ear, you know the music can start again."
