Laughter on the Beach

By Kathy Joy

I went to Beach 1 over the weekend for a mental excursion. Keeping a healthy distance from other humans, I watched from my perch on a picnic table. Above the thundering of the waves beating the shoreline, I heard a sound I hadn't heard in some time:
laughter

A woman, bent down to scour the sand for beach glass, was suddenly drenched in cold lake water; she’d gotten a little too close to the waves. Her response was a wail of surprised laughter. Through the wind, over the water, like a rescue rope to all our drifting souls, her laughter caught us and pulled us to safety.

I laughed along with her and noticed others looking up from their nature walks, their feet, their buried thoughts and dreams. They joined in the sudden ripple of laughter.

It was music.

It was a sacred pause on a windswept beach, lasting only a moment. But I pocketed that moment like rare blue beach glass, and carried it home with me to be sustained and reminded: shared laughter was our Sunday communion; our imperfect song; our rescue.

May you be surprised and soul-fed by a swell of pure joy today. I hope it bumps into you from unexpected places and knocks you down and jiggles out a sound you need to hear: the release of your own shut-in laughter, finally finding a way out.

Kathy Joy is a Pennsylvania-based author of a four-book series, "Breath of Joy." She writes for the collaborative group, Books for Bonding Hearts, and is a blogger at Coffee With Kathy. 

She began collecting her “everyday celebrations” as pithy little affirmations of life.

When her husband, Roger, died unexpectedly on the family farm, Kathy made a decision to keep writing down her affirmations; they have become deep and abiding declarations of survival.

Kathy, in the wake of her grief, strongly believes her writings are a kaleidoscope of prayers sent into a needy, aching world. Recently she was asked to keep a mini-blog for her coworkers, who are sequestered at home because of the pandemic.