My dear friend James McReynolds knows more about joy than anyone else I have ever known. He became joy’s apostle years ago. He has been absorbed with the subject ever since.

In this beautiful book, which is about gardens and beauty, and joy, he leads us at last to a chapter on jouissance, a French word for extreme and ultimate joy. It is where he is headed in his life journey all these years.

I know his readers will find themselves transported to this wonderful heart of joy with him, for his very language reflects on every page his adoration of God and what it means to live with the Divine throbbing through every bit of the universe.

I can’t even imagine what it would be like to be Jim and to live constantly with this vibrancy at the very center of my entire being.

If anybody was ever prepared to enter heaven, it is Jim. I can’t believe that he will find life any richer or more beautiful when he gets there than it was before he left the earth. If anyone ever lived with what one old hymn called the foretaste of glory, it is he. This book is radiant proof of it!

John Killinger

Warrenton, Virginia