sunrise in my heart

I am grateful for the sunrise.

Sometimes when I get too deep, I start to think about how the earth is just one big symbolic cycle going round and round from days to seasons and back again to the beginning. I think there's a reason for all that - all the changing, the growth, the dying, and rebirth of another day, another season, another cycle. I don't really think we know the reasons, just the comfort of reality and repetition: the sun rises again, winter doesn't last forever.

The sun rises again.

Yesterday, I was grateful the day was over. The end found me dissatisfied and in want of a restart button. So I went to bed, closed my eyes, and waited for the natural restart to take place. The sun came up, and I barely noticed. Sometimes it's mornings that find me late for work when I appreciate a touch of pink left in the sky more than ever.

A beginning as large as the rise of the sun - the being that gives our entire world the gift of sight - can have a stilling affect on the earth. It's a rapid change, a push forward unlike any other. Whether we want it or not, a new day comes. As it does, the whole world seems to pause, to wait. The birds throw their rejoicing to any ear willing to listen, the sky catches fire and reflects in all the ponds and rivers and oceans in the world. And, if we take the invitation, we stand still. We reflect. We watch, wait, and wake up to the wonder of our existence a little more than we had before. It's a conundrum that a push forward like the rising of the sun can have the power to still the world - make it reflect.

My mother told me about a woman she knew once who never missed a sunrise. There are too few in a lifetime, she thought, to miss even one. This idea rolls around in my mind lately, pressing me to take the time to let the sunrise be a part of my life. Or, to let the sunrise be a part of my life more than it is when I catch its tail-end going only-five-over-the-speed-limit on my way to work. I'd like to live that principle: never miss a sunrise. I'd like to live that principle, in a more literal way than simply always being up before the sun. 

On mornings when I wake up late, when I eat as I'm driving to work, on mornings when I open my eyes and see the alarm clock instead of the rays pouring through the blinds, when I don't open the windows to hear how happy the birds are that it's light again, on mornings when I only realize it's already light as I open my door to leave for work, those are the mornings I miss the sunrise in a very, very real way.

On mornings when I wake to that jazzy cellphone alarm and stretch and smile in the sunlight I can see through the blinds, on mornings when I take off my sunglasses on my way to work so I can soak up every last drop of yellow-orange and pink in the sky in front of me, when I pull the blinds back before eating breakfast to watch the birds wake up and start to sing, on mornings when I think to say a silent prayer of gratitude that the sun came up again today, and on mornings when the sun rises in my heart with the same power it rises on the world, those are the mornings that I don't miss the sunrise.

I'd like to have many, many more of those mornings, catching the happiness of morning birdsong and carrying it with me all through the day.

Oh, how I am grateful for the sunrise.