It’s the morning after the morning we remembered the mourning and celebrated the Morning.

D has risen early again, because it’s Monday and time to move into a new week of busyness as usual. I want to burrow down under white down, but there’s a light that shines in the dark, and I hear him move about the room. He bends over to kiss me goodbye. I won’t see him again until bedtime.

Dawn’s smearing rose on Horizon’s lips when I flip back the covers. Downstairs, I press the power buttons on computer and coffeepot, then go down another level to add a log to the fire.

Back at the kitchen table with a steamy mug, I check messages from my Facebook prayer group. Then my calendar. I breathe deep. Try not to choke.

How did I clutter up April so quickly? Four different book studies and two from last month I haven’t even gotten to. A couple other writing deadlines. And my own blog. A workshop and a retreat, softball and soccer practices for the grandgirl (and I suspect games that we don’t yet know about.) D is pressing me for my part of the income taxes, which means going over every statement online, clicking on almost every check since I haven’t kept up my check register for the last year. And my daughter has to have surgery. Plus all the usual day-to-day stuff and more corners to declutter.

Where’s the power-up button?

Through the window, I see the snow shaker tipped over again during the night. I know it’s spring. The calendar says so, and D brought the rockers and the bikes back from his sister’s house where we store them for the winter. A robin dances down the drive, and I can’t stay in here. I must move into the beauty, into the light.

I pull a powder blue jacket from the hook and slip it on over my long white robe, grab the camera, then scuff outside in my pink-and-green-striped slippers. (The neighbors are used to seeing me in strange get-ups.)

I’m stilled by the symphony of songs that surround me and mesmerized by how the light glints gold on green, shines on the bluebird house waiting, spills across the ground. I stand and take it all in.

Creation heaves heaven, but we pass it by. To brake and breathe, we think, might just break us.

And we’re all the poorer for it.

Sometimes we need to just stand and stare.

Because in the stares we find the stairs that move us above the mundane. We find splendor in each second, beauty in the midst of battle, webs of wonder woven through the week.

When I come inside with nose numb and fingers frozen, my calendar doesn’t look quite as daunting..

Leisure

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad day light,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at beauty’s glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

~W.H. Davies in Songs of Joy and Others