A MIRACLE MORNING
In her poem "Aurora Leigh," Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote:
Earth's
crammed with heaven,
And every
common bush afire with God;
But only he
who sees, takes off his shoes,
The rest
sit round it and pluck blackberries.
I have certainly plucked my share of blackberries, blind to
what
wonder there is in life. But on occasion I have also had my eyes
opened by others, a bit more sensitive and aware. I cherish those
moments and recall them when life gets too routine and
ordinary. I'll
never forget one such moment.
I stumbled out the door of a mountain cabin where I was spending
the
weekend working with youth and their families at a rustic retreat
center. I had a 6:30 a.m. appointment to keep and squinted from the
early autumn sun peeking over pine-blanketed mountaintops.
"Today is a miracle!" spoke a young, enthusiastic voice
behind me. I
turned toward the radiant face of my teen-aged friend.
"How?" I asked her. I wasn't sure if I could handle any excitement
this early in the morning.
"Think about it," she smiled. "The sun rose, didn't it?"
"Yeah." I found it easy to hide any enthusiasm. It seemed to
rise on
every other morning without any help from me.
"That's a miracle! It is miraculous that the earth turns as it
does.
At night, the sun goes down and in the morning it rises. It just
happens!"
I pretty much had this figured out years ago, I thought, as I
rubbed
sleep from my eyes. I was also busy thinking about how to get a
cup of
coffee.
"And look at the mountains! Covered with trees and grass, they
look so
beautiful. And there," she pointed, "a valley. It's all a miracle!"
"What have I stumbled into?" I thought. "And where is the coffee?"
"Wildflowers blooming," she continued. "It all smells so fresh and
clean and so good." She took a deep breath. Her blue eyes sparkled.
"All of nature receives water and light. Things grow and
blossom --
it is all so beautiful."
Maybe it wasn't coffee I needed...but whatever she had gotten
into! I
didn't know if it was her bubbly personality or the freshness
of the
morning, but I began to sense her enchantment with the daybreak. A
little, anyway. Somehow, she had me believing that the day did
hold a
certain magic.
Then, with a smile that seemed to make her blonde curls laugh, she
gave her pronouncement a note of finality. "And best of all, it
will
happen again tomorrow. And the next day! And the next!" She sighed.
"It's a miracle morning!"
My young friend showed wisdom beyond her years. For her, earth was
"crammed with heaven" and "every bush afire." She should never want
for happiness, for she had already learned, at such an early age,
to
find wonder in the commonplace and to feel gratitude for the
ordinary. If each day for her is a miracle, then a lifetime will
be no
less than a marvelous extravaganza!
SteveGoodier
www.lifesupportsystem.com
