Sunday, February 5, 2012

A Meditation on the Sun (on an overcast morning)

"What a beautiful day the Lord hath made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it."

There is something about a sunrise that gives all who live to see it a mystical and metaphysical uplift. What is it about the rising of the sun that draws people to want to experience it, to be a part of it?

I was walking along the beach one morning in the Fall. There were few of us about at that hour, the hour when the sun is still below the horizon, but is sending its first feelers out, perhaps to see if we are still here, if there will be people to welcome it as it rises above us.

We are here, Sun, awaiting you. You giver of life, you sometimes taker, too. We cannot live without you, we need your light, your warmth, your explosions of rays and waves that cause our inner harps to vibrate. We are your vassals, and your vessels.

What is it that attracts us? Why is there always someone, somewhere, waiting for the sun to rise? Early man thought that day was life and night was death; that we died when we slept, that we were reborn with the awakening of day. That dreams were the other life: the one we lived while we were "dead to the world" in sleep. Still within us, somewhere primitive, pre-historic, perhaps pre-speech or even pre-upright posture lies our attachment to the sun. We need to know it is there, and so we awaken each day looking for it in our lives.

On the beach, in the forest, from the window that only faces another building, we pull aside the curtain of night, of darkness, to search for that ray of light, for first light, for the assurance that we have been reborn another day.

What a beautiful day the Lord hath made. I rejoice in it, and am glad.

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