The Place You Understand Best
My eyes aren’t tired yet, I haven’t lost my patience or thought a judgy thought yet, its quiet, the possibilities are vast and far reaching, I keep email and phone calls for later, I light a candle and start the coffee brewing.
It is early morning, often before first light.
I guess you could say this is the place I understand best - the dreaminess of waking up and the intention of being awake to be awash in it.
Don’t hear me say I completely understand it. I mean, I wonder what Jesus might have been saying while I was asleep and my fences were down. What fears and longings were running free while my body and mind were at rest? Exactly how does the world wake up? What light is present before the sun? How does it not fail to arrive even on a cloudy day?
Of course, morning hasn’t always been welcome. There have been days my eyeballs have felt stuck to my eyelids because I was up all night with a sick child or I went to bed out of sorts with Mike. Or that morning in September when Mike was on a plane, my my Mama was visiting, and my Dad called to say, “Turn on your TV, our world is on fire.” That day, we were glued to our television, the day was scorched, disordered and I tasted metal in my mouth. I didn’t hear from Mike for hours until his plane was grounded in Colorado. Desperate to be home with us, he drove to Oregon a week later.
But mostly, I understand a few things best about morning. I am not usually late or behind which is a delicious feeling, though I do have to be up before any small feet hit the floor boards or I feel that immediately. When I was a mama of four littles under our roof and Mike off to work by 6 am, that meant I was up by 5 or 5:15 am. Back then being up was brutal and hurried. I crammed in a run up the hill by our house before Mike left and grabbed whatever coffee, quiet and Scripture I could before the kids had to be up for school.
These days, provided I am not awakened by a small visiting Wonder before my alarm rings, there is a gentle order of things and I know what comes first. I grab my glasses and get them behind my ears, look out the window (notice light, dark, or the moon’s face), push brew on the coffee maker, pad to the bathroom, listening in the quiet for rain on the rooftops, birdsong, barking dog, trash trucks, faraway train whistle or rooster crow. I light a candle, open my journal and Bible and wait.
Before I do any writing or reading, I pause to let my consciousness come home to me, body and soul. I simply sit while the coffee brews and the candle flickers. I hold my hands and heart open to accept God’s warm smile.
As I continue rising from sleep and while still foggy, I home in on the previous day and locate three things I am grateful for from the last 24 hours. I write them in my journal along with any dream I remember.
I pour a cup of coffee, swirl with cream, and sip while reading a Psalm or Gospel story. I jot down what stands out to me, hovering pen over paper for whatever comes next if anything. I might remember a dream. Lately, I have been dreaming about striped feathers. I think they’re hawk or owl feathers. I know they are black and brown striped, but in my most recent dream,they turn white when I touch them.
Then any number of things can happen. A grandchild might join me by candlelight and snuggle up in the crook of my waist. I might do a NYT puzzle like Wordle or Connections. Mike usually goes to bed a little later than me, so he might wake up and play the music on his guitar or on Alexa that he woke up with. Some days I set a timer for 10-20 minutes for centering prayer or write out a prayer of Examen.
I will definitely go on a walk in the neighborhood or ride my bike in the woods. The lift in my spirit at the sight of pink-edge skies or tangerine behind the mountain, the smell of juniper or lilac on the wind, or the sound of pine cones beneath my feet is too beautiful to miss. Even though my kids are grown and flown, the school bus lumbering in the neighborhood is a sight I love.
Writer Brian Doyle capture it this way,
So I am present in the kitchen window at 8:29 exactly if at all possible, to be given the gift of a kid licking the window, or a kid waving at me, or one little kid this morning inarguably and thoroughly picking his nose. You wouldn’t think in the usual course of things that a boy picking his nose would be a glorious and poignant and thrilling and joyous sight, sometimes that seemed truly and deeply holy, but it sure was, to me. All children are my children and yours and the bus bonces down the street every morning and we are not dead and all is grace.
I have that hopeful feeling of not wanting to miss a single moment, the beautiful ordinary full of everyday miracles.
All of this happens because I hold back the news, to-do’s, phone calls or email. I even wait for breakfast.
But that is another thing about the morning as a place, it can stretch throughout the day either by its effect or because there is time to return to anything that might have been interrupted later in the day. And it smells good like crisp bacon, scrambled eggs, coffee and toast or cinnamon oatmeal with fresh raspberries or a slice of cantaloupe.
There is something about morning that woos, holds hope like a robin in my breast, opening up the day and my heart no matter what comes next.
“Why do people keep asking to see
God’s identity papers
when the darkness opening into morning
is more than enough?
Certainly any god might turn away in disgust.
think of Sheba approaching
the kingdom of Solomon.
Do you think she had to ask,
”Is this the place?””
This is Day 2 of #goodnessgrounded.