I saw the tree with lights in it. I saw the backyard cedar where. the mourning doves roost charged and transfigured, each cell buzzing with flame. I stood on the grass with the lights in it, grass that was wholly fire, utterly focused and utterly dreamed. It was less like seeing than like being for the first time seen, knocked breathless by a powerful glance.
~Annie Dillard

“I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck.”
~Annie Dillard

So much of my time is spent fixated on what I control (or don’t):
what I see/hear/taste/feel/do/want/need.
It is all too much about me.

Instead how must I appear to my Maker as I begin each day:
my utter astonishment at waking up,
true gratitude for each breathless moment,
surely awed by how resonant I peal when struck senseless

by life.