"Earth is a Paradise, the only one we will ever know. We realize it the moment we open our eyes. We don’t have to make it a Paradise-it is one. We have only to make ourselves fit to inhabit it." Henry Miller

If you awake early in the morning and are able to take in the day at its birth, you will see it. This Paradise, waking up, or our human eyes and senses awakening to it. This morning I had reason to not only wake early which is my usual pattern, but to actually walk out into the day. I should say that,In general, most Minnesotans are crabby right now. Yesterday I stood at a soccer game in which I experienced snow,rain, brilliant sunshine and gloomy gray skies….all in the period of 90 minutes. This on-going hostage situation of Winter has us all a little testy.

So this morning as I traveled across the Mendota Bridge which spans the Minnesota River as it meets up with the Mississippi, I didn’t expect to be dazzled. And yet there it was. On one side of me the half Moon stood watch in the blue sky of morning. In my rear view mirror I could see an orangish-pink begin to color the misty horizon. I found myself suspended in the halo of these beacons of night and day. Later as I crossed the bridge back toward the East, the Sun was showing itself……a bright red ball of fire screaming: "Look at me! Look at me!"  My eyes were momentarily drawn away from its brilliance to the sight of at least a dozen wild turkeys, huge and glistening in the oily greenish black way they do, strutting their stuff on the side of a hill. All this before 6:30 a.m.

And so here I was, someone who yesterday said ‘to heck with you!’ at what seems like a god-forsaken land of never-ending gloomy weather. I had essentially ‘broken up’ with this land. Then this morning I was seduced once again by the remarkable beauty, the unmistakable wonder, the never-ending allure, of this world. This Paradise had once again shown up at my door with a bouquet of flowers, fluttering its eyes, flirting with me. I shrugged my shoulders and said, "O.K., you’re right. I love you." And we made up.

If you wake early, that’s what can happen. It might work the same if you stay up late and take in the flirtation of the descending nighttime. But the Sun does have a way to turn your head….and make you fall in love all over again.

"Do I not fill heaven and earth? says God." Jeremiah 23:24