So too, the heart

I get up at roughly the same time every morning. It is good for my body as well as my spirit- the constancy of it, but also what it allows. Establishing a routine can allow for noticing variations in the pattern that otherwise might have gone unnoticed. Scientists have approached curiosities in this way for years; however, for me, it is less an issue of resolving curiosity than expanding it, allowing wonder to be in greater and greater dimension.

The nuances of sunrise, for example. By watching it every morning here in Rome, I can say that yesterday's was a vibrant, confident, proclamation of glory and today's is a bit misty...sifted through the clouds and emotions of a just-waking sky. How lovely to know that both are complete, both represent a fullness. What will tomorrow's add?

In a similar way, these weeks have taught me new things about the capacities of my heart. Each day brings unique feelings, opportunities to go to the rooftop and proclaim my "YAWP" (thank you, Walt Whitman, for that) as well as times of more subtley. A gentle curve, a bend around which one finds a stand of honeysuckle perfuming the night air. The boldness of one, the quiet of another...each yeilding a fullness my heart is pressed to contain.

And sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes I can do no more than weep in gratitude...or in fullness or in awe or simply as a response to the intensity. Sometimes my response is a ripple of quiet floated in the pond. Sometimes laughter...

But, it occurs to me as I sit here with coffee, perfectly milked, and quiet all around, save the nubby bumping of my fingers on the keys, that the love that lives in those moments is like the sunrise.

The sunrise is the expression that comes in different ways...in different colors and intensities and nuances...

but still, it rises.

Because that is what the sun does.

And so too, the heart. It loves.

God is good.

God is enticing.

What will tomorrow be?

for now it is enough to know the sun will rise.