The Call to Rise

Photo by Andressa Voltolini on Unsplash

The sunlight rests on my keyboard and I’m reminded of all the things I’ve seen or read on how we all, all of the animals including us, are drawn to the rising sun.

I just saw a story and photos of a black bear leaning against the rail of a hotel patio watching the sun rise. I’m reading Normandi Ellis’ memoir, Dreams of Isis: A Woman’s Spiritual Sojourn. In it she talks of the Ancient Egyptians love of the sun and how they saw the baboons watching, almost worshipping the sun as it rose. They even built statues of baboons doing just that. Carl Jung commented on the baboons in Egypt as well. And in a two-story apartment I once lived in I watched mourning doves on the roof next door stand together facing east as the sun came up over the houses across the street.

When I get up early enough, I open the east-facing blinds in my writing nook and greet the sun. It’s as though we’re born for this moment, that we are born in the moment the first rays appear over the horizon. The horizon is a place of possibility. All of us beings on this planet recognize a new day. In those first silent moments we realize the sun isn’t only rising over the horizon, it’s rising within us. Our heart is a horizon over which the light of awareness and compassion ascends if we let it.

I highly recommend you wake early, face east and watch the sun rise. When you do, know you join all of Earth’s creatures in a shared act of awe. We share this. We are not so different across culture or species. For one moment, at various times on this planet, we all turn to the sun, we turn within, we open to a new day in silence. Though our understanding may be different, we all feel the warmth and renewal of a shared star. Even those beings that live beyond sunlight deep within earth or ocean, even they are affected by the power that moves us all. May we realize this and the infinite possibility of a new day.