Sunrises 6

Peaceful, with just a brushstroke of monochrome light, the coming of snow heralded the day's arrival. Rest, sweet world.

Sunrises 5

The great gift of this morning's sunrise was simply that it happened.

Sunrises 4

Beauty can sometimes be so hard to receive, but the gift is always there for those who desire it.

This morning looked as though it might be a repeat of yesterday sans snow on the trees. But beauty is often hidden, and as light infused the world, it revealed faint wisps of pink in the morning blue. Beauty needed but light to reveal it.

Thus far, these mornings have been meditative or reflective for me. In other words, I have interpreted them, extrapolated. I have viewed them through a lens colored by my emotions. I have searched them for hope and beauty and the promise of a new and better day. I have not yet experienced a contemplative sunrise, one in which I simply receive what it has to communicate to me.

Sunrises 3

A bluebird sky shifted emphasis to the evergreen watchers, expectancy shrouded in snowy silence. The world was frozen but poised for the coming of the dawn. Tension thickened the air, each breath coating the tongue. It was a stunning peace.

But I, exhausted and heavy of heart, hardly noticed. I did not take part.

Sunrises 2

Thick clouds hung low over the eastern sky in an attempt to obscure the morning sun. As the day's waking approached, it seemed the effort might succeed. But then, with hope waning, the light hallowed the Cimmerian cast of the clouds, transforming their tops into luminescent crowns. The western horizon became flame. The light redeems the dark.

Sunrises 1

I thought I had missed the peak, but as I walked the sidewalk with coffee in hand, I saw Storm Peak aglow in deep pinked beauty. It was a wonderful surprise, wholly unexpected; but then, 'wholly unexpected' is so often the way of the truly holy. Maybe that is part of what makes it holy. It is that which is so far beyond expectation, so other, that its confrontation of us leaves us in awed wonder. We are stunned still before it because it is the only appropriate response, and the only possible response.