Waking up this morning in Ohio, I made my way out of the hotel room to the lobby for a cup of coffee. The rest of my family was either sleeping or working and I wanted to begin the morning in a quiet way. I sat looking out the window onto the cold landscape. No snow covered the ground but I could tell by the steam rising from the cars outside that it was a frigid morning. The view out the window was not particularly beautiful. In fact, it was anything but….bare trees, cars and trucks zipping by on the nearby freeway, a rush hour beginning to form before my very eyes.

But I was facing east and no matter the initial sights that greeted my eye, they began to be made beautiful by the incredible ball of hot pink and orange that made its way up the horizon. At first it was only a sliver of sphere. Then over a period of minutes, right before my staring glance, the emergence of sunlight present in this globe of red. Cars and trucks continued to speed by. The other hotel guests pulled their wheeled suitcases out to their cars, their breath visible in the morning air.I wanted to run out into the parking lot shouting: "Stop! Look! The sun is rising! Isn't it beautiful?" But, of course, I didn't. It's best not to be seen as a 'little crazy' in public places.

This miracle of morning once experienced by our ancestors as pure gift is, to us in our fast paced world, taken for granted, most often ignored. It seems a shame, doesn't it?Those who once thought of sleep as a 'small death' rejoiced at waking up and seeing light be restored to their eyes, their life, their day. Oh, for the shedding of our intelligence, our understanding of how the world works and to be gripped once again in amazement….wouldn't it be wonderful?

"Have you ever seen 
anything 
in your life 
more wonderful 
than the way the sun, 
every evening, 
relaxed and easy, 
floats toward the horizon 
and into the clouds or the hills, 
or the rumpled sea, 
and is gone-- 
and how it slides again
out of the blackness, 
every morning, 
on the other side of the world, 
like a red flower 
streaming upward on its heavenly oils, 
say, on a morning in early summer, 
at its perfect imperial distance-- 
and have you ever felt for anything 
such wild love-- 
do you think there is anywhere, in any language, 
a word billowing enough 
for the pleasure 
that fills you, 
as the sun 
reaches out, 
as it warms you 
as you stand there, 
empty-handed-- 
or have you too 
turned from this world--
or have you too 
gone crazy 
for power, 
for things? "
~Mary Oliver