Another Dawn Closer

Today our country turns the page on four brutal years. Brutal for the country, brutal for the Church, and brutal for the Church’s perception and witness in the country.

Just last night, our then President-Elect and VP-Elect attended a memorial honoring 400,000 lives lost to this pandemic, the mall’s reflecting pool lit up with 400 lanterns. How has it taken us this long to do such a thing? To stop? To be? To grieve? To mourn with those who mourn?

What a sobering night it was. What a gripping dark it’s been.

And then the dawn.

I’ve been waking up before sunrise this year. I had been sleeping in til 10, 11, sometimes 12 in those final, fateful months of 2020, and I decided no more of that. That apathy, that hopelessness.

I’ve been aiming to slide back my bedtime (still a work in progress) to account for those extra hours of sleep, to get a quicker start on the day, but also a slower one. A more savoring start.

Getting my schedule in sync with the sun this year has been blissful — sacred, even, these mornings, these new rituals connecting me with my body, my senses.

As a feelings-dominant person, I’ve learned it’s vital I escape my heart’s swampy vortex, again and again, forcing myself to interact with the world beyond the chasms of my inner universe . . .

And so I wake up in the dark, my Christmas lights still up, gleaming in the living room bay window.

I light a candle and a lamp.

I start my diffuser and breathing in peppermint oils or frankincense.

I sound some ambient music through my speaker.

I grind and brew and smell and drink a cup of coffee from Ethiopia.

I slide into my giant beanbag and wiggle my toes against the carpet.

I turn tangible pages of Scripture rather than digital ones on a screen, and I pray aloud.

All while the sun rises outside my bay window — another dawn, as sure as the last.

What a comfort. What an assurance. That no matter how much the last day or last four years have tested us, drained us, broken us . . . the sun rises anew. Gives us a new chance to absorb the light and also a new chance to shine it.

Or as poet laureate, Amanda Gorman, perfectly put it at today’s inauguration:

“For there is always light

if only we’re brave enough to see it,

if only we’re brave enough to be it.”

The day isn’t saved by any one man or any one woman or any one flag. It isn’t saved by a country or a party or a church.

The last four years have shown me, again and painstakingly again, I’m not made for any earthly kingdom, certainly not an American kingdom. But even with someone I deem a more competent, compassionate leader in office, this earthly kingdom isn’t where I belong. It’s not where any of us belong.

Each day, we’re called to bring more of another kingdom to these hills and plains. By loving our God. By loving our neighbor.

This other sort of kingdom draws nearer with each morning . With each step forward and occasionally some backwards . . . another dawn closer.

Our hearts were not made for this world, and I feel it most strongly in the dawn. The tension, and also the hope.

As the black turns to gray. As the warmth of my coffee settles in my chest. As I shift in my beanbag and look out, I swear I catch a glimpse of this other kingdom outside my bay window. Somewhere in the pinkish, salmon swirls o’er the mountains, falling on us. Calling to us.

If you haven’t caught the dawn in a while . . . may I invite you to join me one morning? Or perhaps all year long? Maybe you should adjust your bedtime, too. Set an alarm and catch the dawn with me some time. Lord willing, I’ll be there again tomorrow with my coffee and oils.

And also at the next dawn. And the next . . .