Awe
The Inner History of a Day, John O’Donohue
No one knew the name of this day;
Born quietly from deepest night,
It hid its face in light,
Demanded nothing for itself,
Opened out to offer each of us
A field of brightness that traveled ahead,
Providing in time, ground to hold our footsteps
And the light of thought to show the way.
The mind of the day draws no attention;
It dwells within the silence with elegance
To create a space for all our words,
Drawing us to listen inward and outward.
We seldom notice how each day is a holy place
Where the eucharist of the ordinary happens,
Transforming our broken fragments
Into an eternal continuity that keeps us.
Somewhere in us a dignity presides
That is more gracious than the smallness
That fuels us with fear and force,
A dignity that trusts the form a day takes.
So at the end of this day, we give thanks
For being betrothed to the unknown
And for the secret work
Through which the mind of the day
And wisdom of the soul become one.
Just past the condos and beach houses that line the shoreline of the area north of North Myrtle beach, the area known as Cherry Grove, the street dead ends into what appears to be nothing but a clump of cedar trees, sea roses, and a blue broken down car that has been slowly growing into those cedars for years. But if you know there’s a path there, you might stumble upon a stretch of beach that’s become a “home” for my nervous system.
If I rise early enough, I can be sure to get one of the three parking spaces here where the road ends. I tuck myself into the narrow, sandy path, usually walking in the still darkness of dawn’s very first light. I tiptoe, because the darkness seems to tell me to do so. And then, as the trees and roses end, suddenly I spill out onto an open stretch of beach where there are no buildings, often no people—just ocean, sea birds, the rising color of the sunrise just beginning to ascend over the far horizon of the water. Often the moon or the stars still wink above, hanging on for a time longer. The waves crash and I feel my breath and heartbeat connect to this rhythm of ocean rolling in and out.
Here, my nervous system remembers a story of safety, and it begin in the held space of awe. There has never been a morning here that I’m not held in the wonder of the morning light coloring the sky and the shoreline with its bright insistence that each new day will be dressed up in this ordinary miracle that is the sunrise. Watching it arrive, I am transcended from whatever was behind me on that cedar-lined path, into a space of healing and wholeness.