An extract from Wise Traveller: Happiness

Happiness comes in so many guises: euphoria at a moment of achievement; the relief at the ending of a 'difficult' day; the feeling you get in the company of a good friend; the delight when your favourite tune comes on the radio. My feeling about it now is that true happiness is more like complete peace, a sense of contented belonging. In this peace, everything seems to 'belong'; everything seeming to share this moment with me. Or rather I'm sharing this moment with everything, as if I have stumbled across some act of devotion poured out by creation and have been graciously allowed to stay and become part of it. The sound of adoration varies: the cathedral choir's four-part Easter anthem, the ancient rhythm of monastic chant, the rousing sound of the Stretford End celebrating another goal. This praise is almost silent, a sort of hum of life melding together the chirping of crickets, the song of birds, the sound of bees content with honey; the rolling of water gently over stone; nature's evensong. Even the trees seem to celebrate with a show of autumn gold replayed in the hue of a bowing sun.

And he is there - the one who inspires the Easter praise, and fills the monk's devotion, the one who gives us talents, the one who is the very source of creation. This devotion is the echo of his life breathed in all things, inspiring all things, at one with all things. This moment is a privilege; complete happiness; happy completion. A privilege I wish could be shared by those who never feel peace: the lonely, the suffering, the frightened. A privilege we deny to so much of the world through our careless destruction. He is in there with the suffering too, arms outstretched, sharing the pain, embracing all creation, drawing it into himself - the Maker remaking, bringing his at-one-ment.

Steve Hollinghurst

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