Joyful thoughts for Thursday

1.  Look what I got in the mail:  A package from my daughter that was wrapped in JOY.

2.  Time for a confession.  Everyone knows that old age is our "second childhood," and everyone also knows that you can't trust children around Christmas gifts.

3.  When I realized my daughter didn't actually say it was for Christmas, even though she used Christmas wrapping paper, I went ahead and opened the gift.

4.  And what was inside?  More JOY, which is now hung on the wall where I will see it every day.

5.  When I texted her to thank her, she wrote back that she wanted me to have a bit of Christmas.

6.  I told her I'll hang JOY on my cart, when I go to the Circle@Crown Café to eat.

7.  Oh, by the way, Clawdia wanted to play with that tassel on the bottom.  Nope, nope, nope!  This one's not for you, Clawdia.

8.  Let's make more connections to the word JOY, some of which I have shared before.  It's my favorite word, for one thing.

9.  Why?  Partly because I've spent a lot of time with this word; to wit:  I presented a paper on "Joy or Despair?" at the Southeastern Undergraduate Philosophy Conference held at Emory University back in the early 1970s.  I asked why existentialists seemed to focus on despair (Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus come to mind).  If, as they say, we find our own meaning in life, why not choose joy?

10.  One of my favorite phrases from the Bible is "make a joyful noise," so when I started a church newsletter, I named it Joyful Noiseletter.

11.  I was so "into" the meaning of joy during my undergraduate years that my best friend addressed my mail to "Bonnie Joy Jacobs."

12.  When my bank got its first teller machine, telling us to choose four letters or numbers to access it, I considered using B-J-O-Y.  My young daughter Barbara said, "But Mom, anybody could figure out that's what you would pick." 

13.  At the top of my blog about words, I have these words:  "Joyful Noiseletter — an exuberant newsletter to myself about joyful things, like words, which I enjoy."