Even after all this time the Sun never says to the Earth, "You owe me." Look what happens with a love like that, it lights the whole sky.
Hafiz
For the last week or so I have taken to getting up before dawn and watching the sunrise. Before all the noise of the morning traffic begins, I get my cup of coffee, collect my meditation beads, and position myself in front of the big window over my desk. Although the window faces west, I get to see the first hint of the sun as it rises in the east behind me and begins to cast a golden glow on the hills in the distance. Watching the sun slowly move from the tips of the treetops to the rooftops on the street below is breathtaking. Who needs a mantra. This is meditation at its best.
This morning I was up early enough to catch the geese from a nearby farm as they made their daily trek across the sky to the river a few blocks to the south where they hang out most of the day until dusk when they fly back home. As the sun rose higher in the sky the birds, who had been singing the day awake since before dawn, started doing their morning aerobics. A mother crow with three tiny babies were playing tag in the sky as she cawed at them to pay attention and fly right. My squirrel neighbor tentatively crept out of her hole in the neighbor's roof and went hunting for breakfast. Morning doves came to visit across the way looking for seeds from the pine tree overhead, and a female cardinal came to sit in the little tree out front and sing me a "good morning."
What is it about watching the sunrise and seeing the day come alive that fills us with hope? Do you think that was Mother Nature's intention, to remind us that no matter what is going on in our lives, the sun will come up every morning and a new day will be presented to us all gift wrapped in promise and possibility? I like to think it was. It has certainly had a positive affect on me. Instead of waking up dreading another day of physical therapy and pain, I wake up eager to watch the birth of the day, the awakening of my animal relations, and the beginning of what could be a new and wonderful day of possibilities. I ask you, what better way could you want to wake up?
And so it is.
