VENTURING INTO THE kitchen to do more than employ the dishwasher, has been a new experience for me. I’m actually learning to cook again after a hiatus of more than 20 years when Mike cooked gladly and competently.

At first it was challenging. I’ve somewhat slavishly followed recipes, eschewing meat and discovering a whole realm of food that never took Mike’s fancy, but certainly suits my palate: chickpeas, lentils, coconut yoghurt, wild rice and more.

And then one day, I made a discovery. Well, two actually. The first was a dead easy recipe for bread, no kneading and foolproof. As I took it out of the oven, the top all crusty and brown, the shape rounded just as it should be, I thought to myself, I can make bread!

The second discovery came as I carefully carried it over to my mother’s house next door to show her. I felt a small rush of joy. Not pride. But joy in this little accomplishment.

And later that day, it set me thinking about occasions of small joy. How often they come unbidden and unexpected. Grief, or disappointment, or pain can close our hearts, till we wonder what it would take to open them again. We can pray for peace. We can distract ourselves. We can search for answers.

But acquaintance with joy is like a fantail that flits here and there, lands for a moment and is gone. We never saw it coming and we didn’t know when it would leave. But when it lands, its felt presence is much more than mere enjoyment. It stirs some small joy.

Where I live in the Ida Valley, we are bounded on both sides by hills. Craggy tor rocks jut out here and there. There’s matagouri and a few trees. But that description doesn’t tell you what happens when the late afternoon sun lights on the tors or hits the snow-topped hills at the end of the valley. To see that is a small joy, or what the Celtic Christians call the thin place between heaven and earth. There’s something ineffable about a landscape touched by the light, something beyond words, maybe a tad closer
to heaven.

Does my small loaf of bread qualify? Absolutely. So, I discovered does the 5pm gin and tonic with my 95-year-old mother, sitting opposite, clinking our glasses with a “slange” (she’s Scottish). That moment of comfortable companionship has an “ah-ha” quality about it.

Little joy has a habit of breaking in, unannounced. No great fanfare, no flourish. Suddenly it’s there. But while I can’t anticipate it, much less manufacture it, I can live attuned to occasions of small joy. The afternoon blackbird, sitting at the top of the silver birch tree, who seems to break into tune every time I venture outside. The frost on the lawn that becomes a sea of diamonds as the sun surges over the hill. The intricate pattern of shadows created by a trellis. All speak to me and say, there’s more at work here than the play of light and sound.

The more I look, the more I see. Maybe that’s what God intended.

Tui Motu Magazine. Issue 286 October 2023: 32