Morning Prayer. Trust. Hope. Responsibility to Life. Love. (May 2024)

Susan's Thursday morning note May 30, 2024
Morning Prayer.  Trust.  Hope.  Responsibility to Life.  Love.

Good morning!   So dark this morning.  No moon.  No stars.  Just the “infinite expectation of dawn, which does not forsake us in our deepest sleep.”  Any moment I will see what color the sun wore to bed last night.  Yellow?  Pink?  Gray?  What animals are just now being called in by their mothers to sleep for the day?  What little nests have been prepared for the little ones who played all night?  Little spiders heading in to their homes.  Large mammals I can only imagine right now pawing in their den to sleep for the day after a night of hunting for their babies, for they also have the “infinite expectation of dawn...”  Another gift about to arrive as my angel of dawn tries to peer through my curtains to hand me her gift.  This day.  Our gift.  Another day to look to the heavens for our morning prayer of gratitude and for the gift given from the heavens of peace.  My scene for you holds a steaming cup of coffee, little paws opening and shutting with purring breaking my silence, and two thin books that strengthen me.  I Will Lift Up Mine Eyes and Mother Teresa: No Greater Love.  Below are words I hope will give you strength to find the beauty and hope in the day ahead of you.

Prayer at Morning by Robert Louis Stevenson The day returns and brings us the petty round of irritating concerns and duties.  Help us to play the man, help us to perform them with laughter and kind faces, let cheerfulness abound with industry.  Give us to go blithely on our business all this day, bring us to our resting beds weary and content and undishonored, and grant us in the end the gift of sleep. 

I Trust by Helen Keller I trust, and nothing that happens disturbs my trust.  I recognize the beneficence of the power which we all worship as supreme – Order, Fate, the Great Spirit, Nature, God.  I recognize this power in the sun that makes all things grow and keeps life afoot.  I make a friend of this indefinable force, and straightway feel glad, brave, and ready for any lot heaven may decree for me.  This is my religion of optimism.  Experiencing a great sorrow is like entering a cave.  We are overwhelmed by the darkness, the loneliness, the homesickness.  Sad thoughts, like bats, flutter about us in the gloom.  We feel that there is no escape from the prison house of pain.  But God in His loving-kindness has set on the invisible wall the lamp of faith – whose beams shall guide us back to the sunlit world where work and friends and service await us. 

The Art of Hope by Wilferd Peterson “The well-known maxim, “While there is life there is hope,” has deeper meaning in reverse:  “While there is hope there is life.”  Hope comes first, life follows.  Hope gives power to life. Hope rouses life to continue, to expand, to grow, to reach out, to go on.  Hope sees a light when there isn’t any.  Hope lights candles in millions of despairing hearts. Hope is the miracle medicine of the mind.  It inspires the will to live.  Hope is the physician’s strongest ally.  Hope is man’s shield and buckler against defeat.  “Hope,” wrote Alexander Pope, “springs eternal in the human breast.”  And as long as it does man will triumph and move forward.  Hope never sounds retreat.  Hope keeps the banners flying.  Hope revives ideals, renews dreams, revitalizes visions.  Hope scales the peak, wrestles with the impossible, achieves the highest aim.  “The word which God has written o the brow of every man,” wrote Victor Hugo, “is Hope.” As long as man has hope no situation is hopeless.” 

Responsibility to Life by Henry David Thoreau “We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep.  I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor.  It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful, but I is more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do.  To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.  Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.”

No Greater Love by Mother Teresa “What we need is to love without getting tired.  How does a lamp burn?  Through the continuous input of small drops of oil.  What are these drops of oil in our lamps?  They are the small things of daily life:  faithfulness, small words of kindness, a thought for others, our way of being silent, of looking, of speaking, and of acting.  Do not look for Jesus away from yourselves.  he is not out there; He is in you.  Keep your lamp burning, and you will recognize Him.”

The lamp.  The invisible lamp.  The lamp inside of us.  The candle.  All words of beauty.  Of quiet.  Of stillness.   Of direction.  Of hope.  Lamp.  Candle.  Both such peaceful words used by these writers to guide us.  Still no sign of the sun coming today.  But the “infinite expectation of dawn” is in my soul.  The knowledge the sun will appear any moment.  The same hope of light from the candle.  The lamp.  The peace from the heavens if we only “lift up our eyes.” The promise of peace is in the glance.  The infinite expectation of knowing that we will be given peace at only a glance.  Tonight we will have the chance to write again words of the epitaph for the day gone.  Will any moments be worthy of inscription in stone?  Will we stop the continually moving sand in our minds even if we cannot stop the sand flowing.  Will we notice the gifts?  The eyes?  They leaves.  The quiet hawks.  The infinite expectation of the peace that passes anyone’s understanding awaits all of us if we will only stop.  Look to the heavens.  Silently pray.  Thank you for letting me enter your Thursday.  Thank you for your business and friendship.   I hope you can get a book soon from our store.  We can then hope that your particular book will feed your soul.  Susan

Latin for this week:
spes, spei – hope
spem habere – to have hope or to entertain hope

perforre – to bear through to the end
obdurare – to remain firm, hold out, persist