Waking Up

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dawn, expectation, give thanks, grateful, Kahlil Gibran, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

I opened my eyes (finally) this morning to a beautiful scene outside my window. The leaves are on the ground now, having done their best to shade us from the heat of summer and serenade us in the breezes. The carpet that they make for the earth is mostly yellow and gives the morning a quiet glow that urges me on to this Saturday. There is expectation in their invitation and I recall a verse from long ago that has stayed with me and pops up often to get me out of bed and into the day.

To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving. (Kahlil Gibran – The Prophet)

O Radiant Dawn, Come!

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Alleluia, dawn, O Antiphons, radiant dawn, Silent Night, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

There it is…in the lectionary readings for this morning, my favorite of the “O Antiphons.” I can feel the rising in my heart as I remember all the glorious sunrise experiences that I have known, both physical and spiritual. Whether at the top of Mount Haleakala on the island of Maui, Hawai’i or in church at midnight singing “Silent Night” I have been gifted with a faith that knows the kind of birth that “destroys death forever.” Just as the dark of night is always followed by dawn and as the great sorrows of life are assuaged by the light of love offered by time and true loved ones, so too may we know peace in this dark moment when disasters and violence are everywhere and cold is colder than we have known it before.

O Radiant Dawn, splendor of eternal light, sun of justice: come and shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death. Alleluia, alleluia!

Natural Beauty

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awake, beauty, dawn, God, gratitude, sunset, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

Yesterday I was driving home at sunset which seemed to me a ridiculously early time for it to happen. I noted the time as 4:20PM and then realized that we are less than a month away from the winter solstice! “How can that be?!” I thought. Those people who told me years ago that time goes more quickly as you age were certainly correct! It’s all about perception, however, as the atomic clock is still chugging along with just seconds of loss or gain over the years. But I digress – sort of.

I can never get enough of the color and design of the sunset on Route 81 as I drive south coming home. That’s where I get the longest view because as my car climbs the hills and dips down into the valleys it’s like playing “Hide and Seek” with the sky. (It is New York State, after all!) So yesterday, I watched this golden panorama sink and then rise for at least 30 miles, shifting slightly all the while but continuing to delight me as I consistently worked at keeping my eyes on the road.

This morning I had the opposite phenomenon to watch as dark turned to deep magenta – just a hint at first and then brighter and glorious behind the tree outside my window. Just for a moment and then it was gone, swallowed up in the light of day. It would have been so easy to miss this brief miracle. Just another five minutes of sleepiness…

The psalmist calls, “Awake! Awake! I will wake the dawn!” I know how that feels and am also bowed in gratitude for the slowness of every sunset. How kind of our God to have created such beauty – so many trees and birds and sunrises and sunsets…and you and me in the midst of it all!

Morning Glory

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awareness, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, dawn, praise, psalm 66, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, Thomas Merton

The deck at the back of our house is wet. I am grateful for the rain that gentled the heat of yesterday while we slept. Everything is still quiet – except the birds who must know that today is the beginning of a new week, a new moment for songs of praise. I feel like the sole witness to creation’s great, miraculous beauty as I read the refrain from Psalm 66: Let all the earth cry out to God with joy!

Some moments later, even the birds are quieting down in awe as Thomas Merton steps in from long ago with his own psalm at dawn just perfect for this holy sabbath day.

Today, Father, this blue sky lauds you. The delicate green and orange flowers of the tulip poplar tree praise you. The distant blue hills praise you, together with the sweet-smelling air that is full of brilliant light. The bickering flycatchers praise you with the lowing cattle and the quails that whistle over there. I too, Father, praise you with all these my brothers, and they give voice to my own heart and to my own silence. We are all one silence, and a diversity of voices. You have made us together, you have made us one and many, you have placed me here in the midst as witness, as awareness, and as joy.

(Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, p. 177-178, excerpted in Thomas Merton – A Book of Hours edited by Kathleen Deignan)

Anticipation

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anticipation, calm, dawn, day, glory, John Phillip Newell, Prayer of Awareness, presence, reunion, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, willing, workshop

Over the past half hour I have had a line from the movie, The Sound of Music, floating in and out of my mind. As Julie Andrews is about to embark on her adventure as a nanny/governess for seven children she muses, “What will this day be like…I wonder…” My wondering is nothing like that of Ms. Andrews/Maria. I am anticipating the arrival of eleven women who have been participating in book studies at The Sophia Center over the past year. They are coming for a sort of “reunion workshop” that I’m sure will be extraordinary as they are, themselves, no ordinary women. My anticipation is calm and willing, an expectation of blessing and rest. So I pray for all of us (and seekers everywhere) a lovely morning “Prayer of Awareness” from John Phillip Newell.

At the beginning of the day we seek your countenance among us, O God, in the countless forms of creation all around us, in the sun’s rising glory, in the face of friend and stranger. Your Presence within every presence, your Light within all light, your Heart at the heart of this moment. May the fresh light of morning wash our sight that we may see your Life in every life this day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The First Moment

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dawn, morning, praise, silence, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, Thomas Merton, wakefulness, wisdom

I believe that I understand at this moment what Thomas Merton wrote at dawn on a day a half-century ago about waking up. It is totally silent inside my house; everyone is sleeping still or again. (The coffee is made so someone was up before sunrise.) Outside is a different story. The mourning doves punctuate the conversation that is constant and loud – some would say cacophonous – among all  the other birds large and small. And through it all the rooster reigns, splitting the silence with a voice that carries to the river and back again calling us all to wakefulness. “It is like the first morning of the world,” Merton writes, “when Adam, at the sweet voice of Wisdom, awoke from nonentity and knew her…” Only in silence, I think, is it possible to have such an experience. And so I will dress and go into the day, carrying with me the pure sounds of praise in the natural world, hoping to know the wakefulness that is available to me this day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Body of Christ

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be, blesses, blessing, body of Christ, compassion, Corpus Christi, dawn, Entering the Silence, good, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, Thomas Merton

Yesterday I had one of those mornings when waking early turned into an amazing blessing of silence and recognition. I chose to leave my computer packed away and just sat looking out a giant window in New Hampshire at the mid-point of my journey to Wisdom School. (See Saturday’s post). Fortified with the coffee and an invitation to quiet from by ever-hospitable friend, Bill, I spent an hour reflecting on the feast of Corpus Christi (the Body of Christ) as it appeared to me on the calendar, in nature and in my own self as a cell in that universal body of love. Here’s what I scribbled in pencil at one point so that I would recall the experience – a great beginning to this “wisdom week.”

4:15 – First light. The birds were loud and luxurious, reminiscent of Thomas Merton’s words at dawn about God “calling them to ‘BE’ once again.” Moving in and out of sleep to listen. (corpus Christi)

6:05 – Full sun. The breeze makes dappled designs in the room where I sit watching the breeze turn to wind in the excitement of morning. A small chime somewhere outside calls out, “AWAKE!” (corpus Christi)

7:00 – No internet to record the thoughts that have been running across my mind like the ticker-tape of stocks in Times Square, NYC. Mostly song lyrics with pauses for breathing out praise. All is glorious! I am dancing even as I sit and hear inside the words of a prayer of Teresa of Avila made into song by John Michael Talbot. (corpus Christi)

All day long I hear within me: Christ has no body now but yours, no hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes with which he looks compassion on this world; yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. Yours are the hands with which he blesses all the world. Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, you are his body…

Corpus Christi, indeed. So on we go.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Call to Presence

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dawn, gentlest, innocence, Lord, love, present, psalm, The Sign of Jonas, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, Thomas Merton

I sit this morning in the quiet moment where nothing stirs except the very energetic birds and where the light came as quickly just now as if someone had flipped a switch to begin the day. Everything is still outside while in my head the thoughts and plans that woke me at 4:30 begin to dissipate so I can notice and embrace the silence…

Now even the birds are quieting down, to listen perhaps to Thomas Merton’s psalm for the dawn. I join them and sink into Merton’s call to presence.

The Lord God is present where the new day shines in the moisture on the young grasses. The Lord God is present where the small wildflowers are known to Him alone. The Lord God passes suddenly, in the wind, at the moment when night ebbs into the ground. He Who is infinitely great has given to His children a share in His own innocence. His alone is the gentlest of loves: whose pure flame respects all things… (The Sign of Jonas, p. 346)

 

 

 

 

 

This New Day

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beautiful day, blessed, dawn, deep waters of life, gift, Joyce Rupp, Prayer Seeds, receive, spring, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

6:03AM: It’s impossible to stay asleep with all the different birds that are announcing morning outside! I suppose it’s my fault for leaving my bedroom window open all night, but how could I resist? Spring is finally bursting everywhere and it is glorious! It was definitely worth waiting for, although the delay throughout all of April made me wonder if it would ever happen! I celebrate May as the most beautiful month of the year because new life is visible everywhere outside and, as a result, is rising up inside as spontaneous hope. Listen to how Joyce Rupp describes it:

Unscripted. This day. My day. A fresh day. Waiting. Ready to be opened. Holding more than what is expected. No matter the lengthly list of have-to-do, don’t-want-to-do, enter with a readiness to receive, to appreciate. Prepare a full plunge instead of a toe-in-the-water.

Release the tight grip on a measured schedule. Stand on the threshold of dawn like a diver on a cliff eager to receive what awaits, ready for adventure. Aim for the deep waters of life where the day’s activity will surely bring an opportunity to connect with the Holy… (Prayer Seeds, p.154)

May we all be blessed by the gift of this beautiful day!

 

 

 

 

 

Music to Greet the Dawn

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awake, dawn, hymn, King David, music, psalm 57, sacred song, sing, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, voice

Psalm 57 gives me pause this morning – specifically verses 8 and 9. As soon as I read: Awake, O my soul; awake lyre and harp, I am ready with the next line: I will wake the dawn! I have this image of King David standing on his balcony watching the light come and singing out God’s praise as loud and melodiously as anyone ever could, perhaps accompanying himself on the lyre.

I remember the first time I read that the psalm (which actually means sacred song or hymn) was always to be sung in liturgical rituals. I was so gratified because we Roman Catholics seemed to have lost touch with that practice (at least in my corner of the world) and what a difference it makes to our worship!

That thought got me started thinking about singing in general and how humans got started making music. Was it the example of the birds? The sound of water rushing over rocks in a stream or the waves lapping at the shore? The rain dripping on a stone that gave a rhythm to the sound? Or maybe the wind whistling through the trees sometimes? Speaking of that, who first put (or found) holes in a hollow reed and called it a flute?

I’m sure musicians know the answers to these questions and more but, for my part, I’m just glad it all happened since I can’t imagine the world without music – from the greatest compositions to the simplest children’s songs. And here’s a reminder of a response to people who say they can’t sing: “God gave you that voice. Your responsibility is to give it back!” I encourage us all to listen to some music today and praise God by singing along.