I hear your plaint. You feel absent from the party:

"Beloved God, I would love to be a Vaster, more giving and forgiving person than I am. I find fault. Finding fault takes me no effort at all. To be pleased with people as they are is not easy for me. To be pleased with myself is not easy either, yet You love us all.

"God, I believe You would say that everyone today, in this moment of speculated time, is being and doing the best he or she can be.

"God, I am positive I am not the best I can be. I would love to laugh more. I would love to be less serious about Life. I seem to see Life every day as the Be-All and End-All of Life. Life seems to be urgent and does a number on me. It is like, if it were not for Life, I could be happy. My attitude leaves a lot to be desired.

"Most of the time I am down in the mouth. Help me to be good-natured. I am tired of being a critic.

"Yet, there was a time when I was thrilled with Life. I was eager to get up every morning. Would that this could have lasted. I am not speaking of when I was a child and ran up and down stairs. Even as a child, I remember that life was not a cinch for me. It was later that life became joy, and I welcomed life with all my heart. I used to think: ‘What happiness is on its way to me now?’

"I was eager to see what a day would bring when I could hardly wait for it. Tell me, God, what happened to my joy? Where did it go?

"For a time, I seemed to be realized. I mean, Self-Realized, God. I knew joy and only joy. Where did my joy go? Bring it back. Re-send such joy upon us all now. I know that the Sun still rises every day. Is it I who is absent? Tell Me, God, how do I get my own joy back?"

Dear Children with aching hearts, joy is effortless. Joy does not come from insistence. Joy, Joy, extended joy, simply arises before you. Joy comes on its own, or it is not joy.

Joy resounds within you. It just arises. Joy within you sings its song.

It could be said that your happiness was a particular configuration of the stars. For a while, life was a picnic. You had a perpetual effortless joy. We can say fairly that you arose to the occasion of joy. We can say that you waxed rosy with joy. You had no bone to pick with Life. Your heart was flush with joy.

For that wonderful time, you were more than appreciative. For a while, you were 100 per cent in Love with Life.

For that wonderful passage of time, you lived Life. You loved it. Yes, love rose to the occasion, and so did you.

Let go even of having to have this joy. It is one thing to anticipate Life and another to pout at Love’s seeming absence. Gaze forward. Be joy, beloveds.

Like Mary's Little Lamb whose fleece was white as snow, joy will come Home again wagging his tail behind him.

Mary had a little lamb,
His fleece was white as snow,
And everywhere that Mary went,
The lamb was sure to go.

He followed her to school one day,
Which was against the rule,
It made the children laugh and play
To see a lamb at school.

And so the teacher turned it out,
But still it lingered near,
And waited patiently about,
Till Mary did appear.

"Why does the lamb love Mary so?"
The eager children cry.
"Why, Mary loves the lamb, you know,"
The teacher did reply.