Good Morning

Wake up, my spirit; awake, lute and harp; I myself will waken the dawn.

I am in a new routine these last few weeks, just because my doctor was afraid that my swim coach would have to fish my dead body out from the bottom of the pool, and it’s not so bad.

I am back to doing those goofy “core-building” exercises trying to hold my back together, and then, while it is still dark, I cross Country Club and stride through the neighborhood.  

And as much as I have grown to love the smell of chlorine and it has entwined itself into my general sense of well-being, that old creosote does the same thing.  And the hippity hop rabbits and occasional silent coyote in search of cats.  There is always a silhouetted hawk or two perched up high.  And the shrubs along the arrollo veritably quiver with the raucous screaming of birds greeting the dawn.

Because it is a new day.  And one half of the sky is the clear clear midnight blue even though it is not midnight, with a few bright stars and a moon just drifting off, and in the east, where my face is directed, the pink and yellow and orange flames rise up in welcome.  

Wake up my soul.  Let me not slumber.  Fill me with the joy of You and the power and hope that only You bring to the shadowed lands.  

For you alone are the Holy One, you alone are the Lord, you alone are the Most High, Jesus Christ, with the Holy Spirit, in the Glory of God the Father.