Nearly every morning I sit with the sun. I watch it as it brings light to the space where I reside. I am not unaware that it has already brought light for the day to so many. Sitting with the sun is my how I begin my day with the Divine. The sun in itself has so much to teach me and so I open myself and ask what the Spirit would have for me as the sun paints its way over the eastern sky. Evelyn Underhill once described a life of prayer as "our whole life towards heaven."
As I posture myself toward the sun this is my prayer, my whole life toward heaven.
What are your daily rhythms?
How is your "whole life towards heaven"?
And so I wake early because this time with the sun, this beginning of each day of my whole life toward heaven, keeps me centered and grounded (and because I'm old and can't sleep in it works out well.)
I found these words by Mary Oliver as a prayer of their own. The sun, like Love, spreads itself over the fields, the flowers and even over the "miserable and crotchety."
Why I Wake Early
by Mary Oliver
Hello, sun in my face. Hello, you who make the morning and spread it over the fields and into the faces of the tulips and the nodding morning glories, and into the windows of, even, the miserable and crotchety–
best preacher that ever was, dear star, that just happens to be where you are in the universe to keep us from ever-darkness, to ease us with warm touching, to hold us in the great hands of light– good morning, good morning, good morning.
Watch, now, how I start the day in happiness, in kindness.