Bill usually gets up first in the morning, brews that first pot of organic green tea, and I join him just at the perfect peak of flavor, to share our quiet morning moments together.   

          This particular morning about a week ago, the sounds of the Monks of Weston Priory' Formed From This Earth: Songs to Celebrate Creation drew me to a liminal space of renewed hope in the strength of love. I stopped to listen to the soothing tones in the song, Those Who Love -- "Those who have seen the face of God, they are born from the womb of God, for God is love, for God is love," in the words of the monk's melodious chant. "Love's trust has no end."                        

          What a beautiful way to start a day. I heard many years ago that the most important ten minutes in any couple's life are the first five minutes in the morning and the first five minutes after work. I know one of my friends, first thing, turns on CNN "to see if the world is still turning." Another looks to Good Morning America to see what Matt Lauer is wearing, then he gets dressed. At least with CNN you don't have to listen to all the boisterous screaming and meaningless chatter.

           Faith, Hope, and Love are worthy morning moments. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel described an experience of faith in his book God in Search of Man: "Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement . . . get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal. . . . to be spiritual is to be amazed."                       --by Jan

                       On the Shore of Dawn                             

A professor, years ago, told this story: Day after day, he had an "earworm," a song running through his mind that he could not shake. To say "song" is generous; it was actually the advertising jingle from a beer commercial! Day after day, the jingle kept running through his mind, to the point that he was beginning to wonder about latent alcoholic tendencies.

Then, one morning, he realized what was happening. He awoke every day to an alarm from a clock radio. Every morning, at the time his radio switched on, the station to which it was tuned was running a commercial for this brand of beer. The advertising jingle was, literally, the first thing he heard every morning. And he kept hearing it, in memory, at the back of his consciousness, all day long, day after day.

When I played that music of Weston Priory the other morning, I also kept hearing the silent echoes of praise throughout the course of the day.

John O'Donohue, writes of awaking to "the waves of possibility / breaking on the shore of dawn."* Do we drown out the lapping waves of possibility with meaningless noise, or aural clutter? Or do we focus our minds and open our hearts to be washed by waves of promise?

                                                      - Bill