JOY

"The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun."

Christopher McCandless

Oleanders, Vincent van Gogh

Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Context:

For Van Gogh, oleanders were joyous, life-affirming flowers that bloomed "inexhaustibly" and were always "putting out strong new shoots." In this painting of August 1888 the flowers fill a majolica jug that the artist used for other still lifes made in Arles. They are symbolically juxtaposed with Émile Zola's La joie de vivre, a novel.(The Met)

A Washerwoman at Éragny, Camille Pissaro

Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Context:

Pissarro felt an affinity for the daily rhythms of peasant life that he witnessed around his home in the village of Éragny, not far from Paris. This washerwoman is hard at work, scrubbing linens and clothing in one barrel and rinsing them in another. The artist depicted the surrounding landscape with dappled touches of his brush—a legacy of the Pointillist style that he adopted in the mid-1880s. (The Met)

Your turn:

Do you look to find joys in the routine of your daily life?
How can you connect within your spiritual practice to find joy?

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