Not too long ago, I complained on Facebook that I was weary of Facebook. While I love staying connected to friends online, I had grown tired of political bickering, anger, yourcard posts (you know, those victorian images coupled with captions, even though they’re funny and awesome in their honesty), and food shots. I wasn’t anywhere near deactivating my account, but was tired of going to Facebook out of habit.

This morning, the morning after Eunice B. Kidden elevated to novice in the Music City Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, that changed.

Now, other wonderful people where also elevated. Faegala Tina Pfischzoot became a fully professed Sister! (Woo hoo!) Chris Hart (Phoenix Rising) and I (Ann Wenita Morelove) elevated to postulants. But the reason why Eunice is the subject of this post is because she attacked her Facebook account like a sister with a gift card at the MAC makeup counter.

Before I went to bed, Eunice created a Facebook account with her novice sister name and I friended her. Overnight, she revisited pictures (263 pictures so far—Facebook keeps count, you know) where she had been tagged and she retagged them with her novice sister name.

This morning when I woke up, I grabbed my phone off the nightstand and I dutifully checked my Facebook newsfeed as I always do. Months of Eunice pictures had updated to my feed. The feed, my phone, and my morning was flooded, overrun, and overwhelmed with picture after picture of Eunice.

Mornings have always been a thin place for me if I give them the opportunity. What I mean is, if I’m not rushed to get to work, to deliver a child to school, to get to the gym, or if I’m not too hungover to care, mornings are a time when my spirit is close to the surface of my being. There, the Spirit, always present, can break through. When that happens, the purr and nuzzle of our cat on my face, the exuberant body smile of the dog greeting me at the bottom of the stairs, the gentle touch of my beloved, or even a good cup of coffee, can become vehicles where the Spirit  touches my spirit and fills me with an overwhelming sense of joy.

For me, joy isn’t an emotion I can sustain because it truly is overwhelming. I have to back off from it or I will…actually, I don’t know what would happen if I didn’t back off from a joyous feeling because I’ve never pushed myself to sustain it. Anyway, it doesn’t matter, because when joy fades, the feeling that replaces it is gratitude. I can live with gratitude. Gratitude is the perfect place to live. When I feel grateful and I express gratitude, I remember the joy from which the gratitude comes, and I become joyful again—if even a little less so—then grateful, then joyful, then grateful, in a spiraling cycle that leads to profound contentment, peace, and finally, love.

Seeing Eunice’s pictures again this morning opened me to that thin place. My spirit connected with the Spirit and the tears began to flow. What a lovely soul! What a unique spirit in this world! What a gift in my life and in the lives of so many others! Joy! Gratitude! Contentment! Peace! Love.

And we need more love. I ain’t kidden’, Eunice.