Joy in the Morning~ I am eating some bread and a slice of cheese, drinking a cup of hot tea, occasionally glancing out the window, and writing at my listening post as morning comes. The psalmist says, “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.” I am drawn to the joy of early morning, the quiet centering time before the world wakes up. I suppose that is partly why the monastic way of life with its ebb and flow, light and darkness, its rhythms, its oneness with mystery and the natural order, move me deeply. Barbara Brown Taylor, (author of An Altar in the World, Leaving Church, etc.) is a favorite writer of mine. She will be speaking at Emory University at the end of September. I will not be able to hear her because I am going fishing with a grandson of mine, but her subject captivates me. It’s on “Learning to Walk in the Dark” and she offers a challenge for us to keep moving even when we can’t see the way ahead. She even suggests that walking in the dark can nourish the soul as surely as walking by the light of day. As I age, I can’t see quite as clearly as in earlier years, both eyes have cataracts in their early stages and I am not quite as sure of my steps as once I was. What must I do? I must adjust and learn to keep moving, even when I can’t see the way ahead as clearly as I thought, perhaps mistakenly, I did in earlier years when I was in my prime, but what is prime? In the night, I gathered around me a couple of books on grace. One is the book of the monk I visited yesterday. The other book is Frederick Buechner’s, The Alphabet of Grace, a thin little book of only 112 pages. He closes with these magnificent words, “Half drowned in my pillow, a sleepy, shiftless prayer at the end. Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. O Thou, who didst call us this morning out of sleep and death. I come, we all of us come, down through the litter and the letters of the day. On broken legs. Sweet Christ, forgive and mend. Of thy finally unspeakable grace, grant to each in his own dark room valor and unnatural virtue. Amen.”
Posted on: Fri, 30 Aug 2013 11:49:36 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015