Ambushed by joy

Coming back from a lovely Art of Hosting at Tamagawa near Nanaimo.  Lots bubblig out of that one, and so here;s the first little harvest.  Our hosting team (the excellent David Stevenson, Colleen stevenson, Paula Beltgens, Diana Smith, Caitlin Frost, Nancy McPhee, Teresa Posakony and Tenneson Woolf) checked in together around this question:    What would it take to be ambushed by joy this weekend?  This question sprang from  a notion of joy as an operating principle;  What if noticing joy was a basic agreement about how we will work together?

From that came this snippet of a poem that was made from some of the responses:

From the grief of all alone, we build connection to the other
and from need,
surprising forms become clear.
As we spiral inwards, condemned to intimacy
a joyful ambush of fear warms us
to each other giving us names into which we can live,
hosting a self that knows the myriad of ways
joy surprises.