Cultivating Delight

Psalm 36 contains some of my favorite lines in scripture: “You give us drink from the stream of your delight / For with you is the fountain of life / and in your light we see light.” Coincidentally, my favorite Mary Oliver poem, Mindful, begins with similar lines: “Everyday / I see or hear / something / that more or less / kills me / with delight.”

Typically, delight isn’t considered to be a particularly important spiritual value. However, I find it to be so valuable that I include it as a component of my nightly examen. This is one of the questions I ask myself at the end of the day: “What delighted me today?”

Delight is closely associated with gratitude, attention, and humility. If we can’t find something to delight in every day — such as cool, clear water when we’re thirsty, the taste of honey, or the appearance of light when we flip a switch — then we aren’t paying attention. If we aren’t paying attention, we aren’t grateful to be immersed in a marvelous world. If we aren’t grateful, we lack the humility of understanding that everything, including our very life, is a gift from God, and we subsequently suffer from the burdens of entitlement, conceit, and isolation.

Mary Oliver goes on in her poem to say that this is what we were born for: “to instruct myself / over and over / in joy, / and acclamation.” We can teach ourselves to be people who take delight in the wonders that surround us and dwell within us. It just requires a little time each day to cultivate attention, gratitude, and humility.