I am a morning person more than nights. I like when day and world both feel new, not tired and worn and trodden. If to be alone and in mind to self, I’d rather it be in beginning than in end. In beginning, mind goes to all it hopes and dreams in day to live. At end, I think on all I haven’t done, failed to do, and rather than being hopeful or grateful in the present, I give mind and spirit to ahead and on to “another day.”
Yes, on especially good days, I reflect and am grateful; but far more often, up too late, the darker night of mind and spirit catch a hold of me.
I sit on a beach watching waves break and seagulls walk at the edge of surf and foam. The sand is clean where the water washed save for proof of a few awake and amove earlier than I. Still, it’s peaceful. I look on the sun rising, its reflection and lighted path beneath on surface of the sea. I pray, thank God, contemplate, let spirit speak intentions (which, to me, are same as prayer to the one who hears the silence): to be a better man, husband, father—to serve the purpose for which I’m called even when, sometimes, that reason’s hard to see.
I am interrupted in my thought. A stranger’s come to me. He’s lost a phone and asked if I have seen it. I have not—but maybe that’s my purpose today: to help and seek and find what it is another’s lost (and even should it not be found—to make attempt, showing effort and compassion). And so I rise, help as I feel called, searching on the sands as waves break, sea foams, and day crowds begin to gather.
