How can we delight during times like these?
Delight: March's Soul Session
Hi I’m Debbie, a spiritual director, writer and mother based in Glasgow. I offer stories, ponderings and gentle invitations to share a moment with your soul. I host a monthly Sunday Soul Session in my home. It’s a time for quiet reflection, playful creativity and warm conversation, and this Substack started as an overflow of that space. I regularly share my Soul Session themes here, and this month it’s Delight.
Well hello,
As March begins here is an invitation to pause, reflect and play with the theme of Delight. I approach these themes as wells: practices and postures which lead us to the deeper parts of ourselves. So pull up a seat, join me for a cosy cuppa and gift yourself some soul space.
Pause
As we begin, I wonder what delights you? What sights bring you that buzz of joy? Which smells ignite a smile? What sound warms you? Which tastes are pure delight? And what textures do you love? Take a moment to consider this and notice, where do you feel delight in your body?
Some Ponderings…
Delight is one of my words for 2024. Delight is joy, a great sense of satisfaction, pleasure, comfort or diversion. Ross Gay and Shauna Niequist have been two of my guides prompting this pursuit. I love Shauna Niequist’s definition from her Substack essay linked below:
“Delight is when we engage our senses and our spirits to experience the world God made, and in that moment, we feel a welling up of joy, goodness, and gratitude.” - Shauna Niequist
I landed on this word in January after listening to an On Being conversation between Krista Tippett and Ross Gay. In his 43rd year Ross Gay wrote daily essays on the theme of delight, now published as The Book of Delights. Essays include topics such ‘as a little girl’s perfect ponytail bouncing behind her as she crosses the street, something in his garden, a phrase he hears at a coffee shop that reminds him of someone he loves’. I so appreciated the discussion in the podcast about delight in times like these. How can we have delight when we see the atrocities across the world? Or how can we not? Perhaps it’s necessary to savour delight as fuel and sustenance to carry on.
I thought about this one night as I sleeplessly found myself deep in the news of the atrocities in Gaza. I know it’s important to witness, to listen, to allow myself to be impacted by devastation across the world, but I also know that I need to care for myself (even as the choice to do so is a privilege). I signed petitions, wrote to my MP, considered ways to give (it’s amazing how productive one can be at 3am). And then I found myself on ‘Your Pictures of Scotland’ on BBC News. I slowly scrolled through the photos, allowing the beauty of these moments to sink in. I let myself find delight and to acknowledge this also as true, alongside the pain.
Delight is not about expensive experiences, grand holidays or curated moments. It is the noticing of the everyday: a perfect poached egg, the shadows playing among trees, the kindness of a stranger, a dress with pockets. It’s the lollipop man outside my kids’ school who says ‘have a great day kids’ to each child as he stops the traffic. It’s my friend storing away the sound of my twins’ rowdy chuckles in the supermarket. Krista Tippett calls the naming of delightful moments “lingering with small things that are actually pretty big”.
“I want to be a person who has an extremely low bar for delight—meaning that I don’t just feel delight when I see the Eiffel Tower or dazzling fireworks, but that I’m full-heart-lifted at a silly joke from my 11 year old or a gust of wind through the branches in our courtyard. I want to live easily-delighted—that’s one of my core values.” - Shauna Niequist
My son’s blond curls are one of the joys I get to share with the world. I see the embodied nature of delight in his trot and bounce through life. Delight can feel self-indulgent to me, something else I don’t really have time for. Sometimes I’m not sure I’ve even tasted my dinner, never mind savoured or delighted in it. As I dig into delight, it becomes another invitation to pay attention to this life.
A few prompts…
Here are some questions for you to explore in your journal:
Consider your senses. What touch, taste, smell, sound, sight, smell brings you delight?
What delighted you as a child?
What gets in the way of noticing delight?
How can you pay attention to delight?
Imagine a delightful hour, what would happen in it? How would it fill your senses?
And a practice…
I see how the naming of delights for ourselves helps us to grow in attentiveness towards them.
“It didn’t take me long to learn that the discipline or practice of writing these essays occasioned a kind of delight radar. Or maybe it was more like the development of a delight muscle. Something that implies that the more you study delight, the more delight there is to study.”
- Ross Gay
I decided to lean further into delight at the start of Lent, and have given myself the gentle task of keeping a delight diary. I don’t write every day, but it’s been helpful to deliberately pay attentions to these moments. When I do take the time to find words, this helps me to explore and relish these moments and to develop my delight muscle.
I invite you to consider your day and seek out a moment of delight. Then write it down in as much detail as you can, or tell someone about it.
What did this moment mean to you?
How did the delight feel?
A further step is to share these delights, to invite and inspire one another in the search for delight. What has delighted you recently?
As for me:
In a delightful hour I would be outside, under trees with sunlight streaming through.
I’d have a thermos of tea and homemade biscuits.
I’d be alone for half and with some of my people for half.
I would hear the birds and a river.
I would smell pine needles, fresh after the rain.
I’d swing on a hammock and I’d feel the sun on my face.
May you notice delight and be revived this month,
With love,
Debbie
Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
- Mary Oliver
A delight diary - what a fantastic idea. This post has a few of my all time favourite quotes in it - S Niequest on delight and Mary Oliver. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks for this Debbie. I love Ross Gay and his books on delight, which I think has a different flavor to it than gratitude. Delight seems broader, encompasses more. Hmmm.