Centered in Joy and Gratitude

 

Joy is the ripple that unites us all—found in every faith, every philosophy, and every heart willing to embrace gratitude and love.

Dear Reader,

Last night in an AA meeting, the subject for discussion was: “How do we find joy in our recovery program?” That question carried me into a memory from earlier in the day, when I had coffee with a longtime friend. As I listened to him share his life today—with poise, calmness, and a clearer vision of who he is becoming—I felt a deep and unexpected joy. Gratitude welled up in me for the chance to witness his transformation.

That same theme of joy is found in the words of Rabbi Irwin Keller, who reminds us that joy is not the same as happiness. Happiness, he says, is fleeting, tied to circumstances; but joy is a stance, a practice, “a way of moving through the world with presence and connection and love.” You can read his full reflection here: “Insisting on Joy”.

The Talmud commands us to increase joy in the month of Adar—not just in good years, but in every year, because otherwise, no year would qualify. In difficult times, joy becomes not frivolous escape but an act of radical resistance.

I find that resonates with recovery. Joy is not an outcome we chase—it is a by-product of showing up, listening, and walking together in honesty and love. Just as Rabbi Keller describes joy in shivah or civil disobedience, many of us in recovery have known joy in rooms filled with tears, laughter, and hope. Joy emerges when we connect deeply—when gratitude for one another breaks through the walls of isolation.

The Baal Shem Tov once taught: “Accept everything that happens to you in this world in the spirit of love, and then both this world and the next will be yours.” That mirrors what many of us have discovered: that joy can live alongside grief, fear, or struggle, and even transform them. Joy doesn’t erase difficulty; it suffuses it with meaning, love, and light.

Rabbi Keller tells of activists who, even in the darkest days, buried friends in the morning, protested in the afternoon, and danced all night. “The dance kept us in the fight because it was the dance we were fighting for.” That vision is not far from recovery itself. We dance—sometimes quietly, sometimes with laughter—in gratitude for life, for sobriety, for one another.

The psalmist wrote: “Those who sow in tears will reap in joy.” Perhaps our work in recovery and in life is to sow joy now, to cultivate gratitude and love in the soil of today, trusting it will blossom in due season.

So may we keep choosing joy—not as denial of reality, but as its deepest embrace. Joy as gratitude, joy as connection, joy as resistance, joy as gift.