O for a thousand tongues to sing...

It was still dark when I got out of bed this morning (after a scuffle with my cell phone alarm and my sleep-drugged wits that was infuriating but is, in retrospect, quite comical)...and the sum of the matter is that I witnessed the most inspiring sunrise while I feasted on coffee and pancakes. It began as a rich rosy pink that contained all of the light pouring over the horizon, so that the rest of the world around me was dim and shadowed. Then the light strengthened and began to dilute the bold colors into first a creamy blush of pink, and then peach, and then brassy gold. All the while, the air around me tingled with a sort of stained-glass radiance, which ignited the leaves and fence tips and grassblades into mystical detail.

It reminded me of Proverbs 4:18: "But the path of the righteous is like the dawning light, that shines more and more until the perfect day."

The entire experience was like a golden benediction on my day, and set metaphors germinating with joy in my brain. I'd share them, but this post already contains schmaltziness enough. I'm finding that I traffic in cliches a great deal--foundational realities that strike me with excitement and joy as they have stricken hundreds of thousands before me, since the world began. And I want to share them...but everyone has heard them, and unless you experience the feel of the moment, you'll never understand. Sunrises, for example. Description utterly robs such a vision of any potency, because it attempts to translate a moment's heart-thrilling splendor into a paragraph of cumbersome tired phrases. But when I look back on my description, what revisits me is a vision of that glorious morning, and even now I'm smiling.

I am so grateful for the instrument of my physical body: my eyes, my ears, my nose, my tastebuds, my Meisner's corpuscles. And for the glorious creation: air, light, color, substance, motion, music, words, words, words. And for a mind attuned and attuning to the physical experience of living, an imagination enriching it, a spirit luxuriating in it and opening to its Designer in soulish response. And most of all, for the Author of it all--that great Creator Ex Nihilo, Alchemist, Artist, Author, Maestro, Composer, Conductor, Physician, Metallurgist, Father, Friend, Lover, Savior... ... ... ... ...

See what I mean about the cliches?

I am liking life. (Perhaps understatement will lend a little balance to this entry.)