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What Makes You Happy?

by Fr. Eddie Doherty

By June 4, 2018November 23rd, 2023No Comments

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Dear God, Creator of this fresh new world:

The fields and the woods and hills are white again, not with snow but with the blossoms of the wild strawberry.

There is snow too, here and there, and some of it is still piled high, still stubbornly holding out against the sun, still glazed. (It was from the snow, of course, that the strawberry got the idea for its blossoms.)

Everywhere I see white petals. They speak to me of little girls in First Communion veils and dresses, white prayer book in one hand, white strings of rosaries in the other.

The pussy willows have grown so big I could mistake them, at a distance, for chokecherry buds. The maple tree near the river has acquired a million little buttons. Pike and bass are spawning in the slough; and someone has set a trap for muskrats.

Sun and shade make queer patterns on the surface of the water; and in some lights I can clearly see the river bottom. (What clam came reeling home to his family last night? Look at the crazy trail he left!)

The ducks have returned to the Madawaska. They are pretending to be jet planes, dive bombers, torpedoes, or snorkel submarines. Wish I could enjoy the icy water as they do.

Someone nearby has made a bonfire of last year’s fallen twigs and branches. I love the smell of wood smoke. Lord, let it come up to you as incense from your new April. And let me offer with it a prayer of perfect joy.

There are people offering their pain to you as prayer. There are people offering prayers in atonement for misdeeds or grievous sins. There are people offering prayers of supplication, and prayers of petition, and prayers of faith and love and hope.

But prayers of joy, I think, are very few. Yet we have most need of you when we are most happy.

What do we need to make us happy? A new car? A final payment on the first mortgage? A boyfriend? A well paying job or a promotion with twice as much money? A new suit or dress? A broiled lobster and beer? A trip to Europe or some other expensive continent?

Once I worked for most of these things—and only for them. Now my happiness is made of little things. The sun rising in the blazing East. A marigold in full bloom. A sparrow staring at me from a post. A mushroom lying at my feet.

A hamburger or a hot dog with French mustard, or perhaps a dash of horseradish—or even a plate of spinach with melted cheese.

A bunch of wild flowers someone gave me. Sunset and evening star. The faces of happy friends. And sometimes a funny remark will make me happy for a whole day. …

I walked leisurely, thinking of your words, thinking of your Son who also loved to walk upon your hills and of his mother Mary. She passed through hilly country as she hurried to Elizabeth, her cousin. Did she too stoop, now and then, because she saw your glory in a stone? I think she did.

I think she also knelt here and there along some road to smell the aroma of your presence in a flower; or to meditate on your concern for even the least of your creatures as she watched the orderly chaos in an ant’s nest; or to thank you for the gracious cool shade of a tree; or to praise you for the color of your sky and the contour and the texture and the splendor of your clouds.

Heavenly Father, I thank and praise you for the beauty of such a splendid April day! Amen.

Excerpted and adapted from I Cover God, (1962), pp. 190-193, out of print

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