It is in the early morning hour that the unseen is seen,
and that the far-off beauty and glory,
vanquishing all their vagueness,
move down upon us till they stand
clear as crystal close over against the soul.
~Sarah Smiley
Slow buds the pink dawn like a rose
From out night’s gray and cloudy sheath;
Softly and still it grows and grows,
Petal by petal, leaf by leaf.
~Susan Coolidge
For what human ill does not dawn seem to be an alleviation?
~Thornton Wilder
Today, in Bellingham, even the sidewalks gleam.
Small change glints from the creases
in the lady’s mantle and the hostas after
the rain that falls, like grace, unmerited.
My pockets are full, spilling over.
~Luci Shaw from “Small Change”
There were thunder storms and torrential rains to the north of us, to the east and to the south, but we had only a gentle constant showering during the night — a calm center. This morning such undeserved grace is gleaming as if a spill over of twilight’s gloaming.
Today we are awash, cleansed, with bright wings.
Outside the open window
The morning air is all awash with angels.
~Richard Wilbur
A sudden light transfigures a trivial thing, a weather-vane, a wind-mill, a winnowing flail, the dust in the barn door; a moment,- -and the thing has vanished, because it was pure effect; but it leaves a relish behind it, a longing that the accident may happen again.
~Walter Pater from “The Renaissance”
The accident of light does happen, again and again, but when I least expect it. I need to be ready for it; in a blink, it can be gone. Yet in that moment, everything is changed and transformed forever. The thing itself, trivial and transient becomes something other, merely because of how it is illuminated. And so am I, trivial and transient, lit from outside myself, transfigured by a love and sacrifice that I can never expect or deserve. I need to be ready for it.
Summer ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the
Stooks arise
Around; up above, what wind-walks! what
lovely behavior
Of silk-sack clouds! Has wilder, willful-waiver
Meal-drift molded ever and melted across the skies?
~Gerard Manly Hopkins, “Hurrahing in Harvest”
It was not so much a modification of the darkness, as a sigh of relief, a slight relaxing of tension, so that one felt, rather than saw, that the night had suddenly lost a shade of its density… ah! yes; there! between these two shoulders of the hills she is bleeding to death.
~Hope Mirrlees
“A single sunbeam is enough to drive away many shadows.”
– St. Francis of Assisi
I will remember today the power of one sunbeam among the gray clouds to illuminate beauty hidden by darkness.
I will remember I can choose to be light or shadow.
I will remember the difference I can make.
Veil after veil of thin dusky gauze is lifted, and by degrees the forms and colours of things are restored to them, and we watch the dawn remaking the world in its antique pattern.
~Oscar Wilde from The Picture of Dorian Gray
So what do I believe actually happened that morning on the third day after he died?
…I speak very plainly here…
He got up. He said, “Don’t be afraid.”
Love is the victor. Death is not the end. The end is life. His life and our lives through him, in him. Existence has greater depths of beauty, mystery, and benediction than the wildest visionary has ever dared to dream. Christ our Lord has risen.
~Frederick Buechner
Since this moment (the resurrection), the universe is no longer what it was; nature has received another meaning; history is transformed and you and I are no more, and should not be anymore, what we were before.
~Paul Tillich
In trees still dripping night some nameless birds
Woke, shook out their arrowy wings, and sang,
Slowly, like finches sifting through a dream.
The pink sun fell, like glass, into the fields.
Two chestnuts, and a dapple gray,
Their shoulders wet with light, their dark hair streaming,
Climbed the hill. The last mist fell away.
And under the trees, beyond time’s brittle drift,
I stood like Adam in his lonely garden
On that first morning, shaken out of sleep,
Rubbing his eyes, listening, parting the leaves,
Like tissue on some vast, incredible gift.
~ Mary Oliver – from “Morning In a New Land”
Barnstorming 