Morning Prayer

     The cat wanted out and so I saw the sunrise, the eastern sky uniformly orange as if one heavy stroke of a paint laden brush had been applied.  The foothills of Mt. St. Helena were still stubbed  in  muted shades of shadow.

      I returned to my darkened room and lay back on my bed but soon the memory of the color bright sky drug me up to go out and look again.  The morning was now older, I found only a pale  version of that fiery view I had so quickly  taken in.   The colors of light coming wait for no eye.

      I had not, in fact, seen the sunrise, but only the angle of one fractional moment. I had seen no more than a freeze as if captured by a  camera’s lens or a painter’s interpretive palette. I had taken  only one spectral glimpse of a majestic particulate parade that casts its bouncing rays from ever greater height as surely as one’s breath travels to and from the lungs, which breath is sometimes also, sadly, as summarily hailed.  Ah, yes, a new day, sunrise, life….

     I’m reading a memoir that Ivan Doig wrote, This House of Sky.   Speaking of one of his professors he says, “…I was given encouragement and I answered with effort.”    

     Let me answer with my efforts the primal encouragements so readily available with wakening.

At the Gate of the New Year

Greetings as we await the New Year.

Calendars set off time like fences define space…

and New Year’s Eve sits on the line a bit like a gate. 

I find gates fascinating in their ability to invite or repel.

A friend reflecting on how "as we enter a New Year we do not know what lies ahead," posted a few lines from a poem. Of course we don’t know what's ahead, we never really do, and that can strike one alternately as both exciting and at times repellent. 

And as I experience that it is often easy for me to overlook the obvious, I found myself grateful for her flatly stating that we do not know what lies ahead....and for the lines of poetry she shared; a poem, she says, she likes to read each new year.

At the Gate of the Year

I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year

'Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.

'And he replied,'Go into the darkness and put your hand

into the hand of God

That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way!'

 by Minnie Louise Haskins (1908) *

At the gate of this new year, I wish much for others and 

for myself … may it be a gentle year, healthy, productive, 

joyous and full of step by step 

clarity.

  Happy New Year to You

*This is actually quite a famous poem and if you would like to know more about it and the poet who lived from 1875 to 1957 and had a very varied and interesting career,  there is an excellent brief on her life 

from  the London School of Economics and Political Science. 

Painting and Praying

Thinking of dear ones....

For Herb M. I am so glad you have been part of my life, with prayers and tears and hope brighter than any colors we can see or share...

For Susan H. as she mends in the hospital tonight.

For my traveling darlings ...

For Bill M. and his dear GJM.

For a sweet foot that has walked ever so many miles for me and mine.

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